Former Foes, Now Allies! My New Friend Ihor was on the other of the Cold War

 

Ihor Chernik and I in the Cannon Congressional Office Building

(Good pun, soldiers in the Cannon building....)

Today and tomorrow I am one of 700 delegates from around America advocating for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress.  This is my fifth trip to DC since Russia invaded Ukraine.  I have met many immigrants from Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Today was the first time I met a soldier from the other side of the East-West Cold War border.  

Ihor Chernik grew up in Lviv, Ukraine.  He went to college to study electrical engineering. He joined the Soviet equivalent of ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) called Вое́нная ка́федра (Voyenaya kafyedra or Military department). The program required three years of military service. Ihor was commissioned and became a Soviet signal corps officer.  

From a base in Poland, he monitored NATO communications. During peace, his unit was listening for signs of impending war in our radio traffic.  During a war Ihor and his unit would be tracking NATO forces in the battle.  

Several hundred miles away in West Germany, I was training my tank crew to fight a Soviet invasion. Most experts (including Tom Clancy in Red Storm Rising) believed would begin in the Fulda Gap in the center of divided Germany. 

World War III never happened. 

Ihor left Lviv in 1994.  He came to America and a job with IBM as a network systems engineer.  He and his wife Larissa lived in Fairfield County, Connecticut, until Ihor retired in 2020.  Now they live in New Hope.  He started skiing at age 6. Retirement allowed Ihor to spend winters in Vermont as a ski instructor. 

In two meetings today, Ihor and I talked Congressional staffers we were on opposite sides in the Cold War but are now united in support of Ukraine.  We will both be working to support Ukraine and will be together in the spring the next time the American Coalition for Ukraine comes to Washington DC.  

When Ihor found out my paternal grandparents emigrated from Odesa (in 1900 and 1901) he said we should go there together.  So far, Lviv is the only city I have visited in Ukraine.  Let's hope our journey will be a celebration of the defeat of the Russian invasion. 

---- 

To be clear: Ihor and I were not deployed to opposite sides of the Cold War battle line at the same time. I was a tank commander in tank Bravo 13 in Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 70th Armor from October 1976 to November 1979. Ihor served from 1983 to 1986. From 1982 to 1985 I was a tank commander in tank Bravo 14 in Alpha Company, 6th Battalion, 68th Armor: an Army Reserve unit in Reading, Pennsylvania. If the Soviets had invaded, we had tanks ready in storage in Baumholder, West Germany. Thankfully, war did not break out.

PanzerMuseum East Gift Shop

The Gift Shop at Panzermuseum East, Slagelse, Denmark, is crowded with uniforms, gas masks, models, spent brass, radio equipment, flags and more.

 

Museums, like their creators, have personalities. Panzermuseum East in Slagelse, Denmark, is neat with immaculately restored guns and vehicles and displays.  And it is very crowded.  Tanks, trucks, guns, armored vehicles, tank engines, radios, field hospitals, field kitchens, missiles, missile launchers, helicopters, a transport plane, and decontamination equipment crowd the buildings and the area around the buildings.  

I wrote about the museum two weeks ago.

The neat, organized, crowded feel of the museum displays carries over into the amazing gift shop near the entrance. In the photo above, are full uniforms, jackets, spent cartridges from every kind of gun: rifles to howitzers.  The snack bar table is atop 55-gallon oil drums.  

Near the entrance, by a window is a display of dozens of scale model tanks and armored vehicles, soldiers and toy helmets.  

There are hundreds of scale models of planes, ships, tanks and trucks from World War II to present day equipment.

Even landing craft....

Along with the models are racks of uniforms.

Spent cartridges up to 105mm cannon ammo. Radios, field mess kits, cases and other gear. 

Gifts and toys.....

Even toy guns!!!!!

Maria, who runs the gift shop, said  they sell nine of these Soviet era replica gas masks each week to kids who want these masks!! 

Hundreds of packs and pouches.....

Lots of belts......

And uniforms.......

A long rack of dress and fatigue uniforms and hats from various armies and eras.

Flags and canteens....

Hats....

Top Gun gear....

Flight suits......

Tank Museum Designed as a Warning: Panzer Museum East, Denmark

Most military museums, particularly tank museums, display the best and most lethal weapons of their country. Part of the intent of these museums is to say,

"Look at the awesome firepower our soldiers had." 

When I visited the Deutsche Panzermuseum, one hundred years of German innovation and technology was clearly on display. The Armored Corps Museum at Latrun, Israel, displays tanks Israel fought with right up to the Merkava (chariot) developed and built in Israel. 

So I was quite surprised when I toured the many exhibits of Panzermuseum East in Denmark. All of the exhibits are of Cold War Soviet weapons and equipment.  The museum was designed and built as a warning to what could have happened to Denmark if the Soviet Union had invaded.  Their official intent: 

At Panzermuseum East we tell the story of the Cold War and our focus since its inception has been to show visitors from around the world what would have been seen on the streets and in the air if the Warsaw Pact, led by Russia, (The Soviet Union), had attacked Denmark during the tense and heated period leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We also document what would have happened if nuclear weapons had been used, and the terrible consequences of this, namely that there would have been a total Ragnarok throughout Europe, with millions of dead and destroyed.

The collection is several buildings crowded with Soviet tanks, trucks, missiles, guns, motorcycles, radar stations, ambulances, field kitchens, and other equipment. 

BMP armored personnel carrier 

T-72 M1

T-55 AM2

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the museum has been tagging displayed vehicles, like the BMP and T-72, that are being used by the Russian invaders of Ukraine.

Here is what the head of the museum says about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Regarding the horrific and heinous attack on Ukraine. 

Ukraine is being brutally attacked right now, with a lot of material that the Panzer Museum East has on display, which the heroic Ukrainians are also using to defend themselves. Unfortunately, the brutal superpower also has far more modern equipment than the Ukrainians, so it's an unequal battle. That is why it is so important that we all support and help the Ukrainians in their fantastic fight for freedom and democracy. 

On 28 February, Tank Museum East asked the Danish army for a donation of 1,200 boxes of field rations for the brave soldiers of Ukraine. If they are donated, we will immediately drive to one of the major border crossings between Poland and Ukraine and hand them over to all those who enter Ukraine to fight for freedom and democracy and a happy future. Right now, as you read this, what I myself was terribly and cruelly afraid of when I was young is becoming a harsh reality. I myself, together with my wife, visited Chernobyl and experienced Kyiv, and we had only positive experiences and great respect for the people in their struggle to build a healthy democracy and live as free people. 

Out of my pacifist ideology and to point out that war and enmity can and will never lead to anything good for humanity, I have founded my very own private tank museum East. That is why spreading the word about history is so important, even if it seems that at the moment no one cares about the atrocities of the past. Of course I have deep contempt for the cruel and blunt attack on Ukraine.

Best regards 

Owner of the Panzermuseum East 

Allan Pedersen and staff

BMP armored personnel carrier

PRAGA M53/59 "Lizard" with 30mm anti-aircraft guns

Tank transporter flatbed truck with a T-72 tank on the end of its bed.

Boris Libman: The Terrible Life of a Soviet Hero

The phrase "No good deed goes unpunished" is of uncertain origin, but certainly applies to the Soviet soldier and chemist Boris Libman.

Libman was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Latvia in the brief period between the World Wars. 

Libman was just 18 years old in 1940 when the Russians invaded and made his country into a Soviet state.  During the occupation, the invaders confiscated his family’s property and possessions and drafted Boris into the Soviet Army.  

He was seriously wounded in combat twice; the second time he was left for dead.  He survived, but (as we shall see) his paperwork was not so healthy.  After the war Libman applied to study at the Moscow Institute for Chemistry tuition-free as an honorably discharged disabled veteran.  He was turned down because according to Army records he was dead.  With months of work, he was able to prove he was in fact alive and not trying to steal a dead man’s benefits. 

In 1949 he earned a master’s degree and went to work in Stalingrad to develop a production facility for Sarin--nerve gas.  Despite his treatment by the Soviets, Libman believed in communism and wanted to help with what he saw as the defense of his nation.  Libman worked on lab studies and on setting up a pilot plant.  The main source of information of the Soviet team was captured German scientists who were less than fully cooperative.  Libman was not only a talented chemical engineer, but was fluent in German—a fact he kept from the captured scientists.  Libman listened as the Germans spoke among themselves and was able to get information that the Germans were hiding from their captors. 

Most of the hardware for the Sarin plant was confiscated from a German wartime production facility.  For the new parts, Libman had to work with Soviet producers, and so the projected ground to a halt several times.  In the centrally planned Soviet economy, production was measured by the weight of delivered machinery.  So the small, specialized parts Libman ordered for completing the Sarin plant were of low priority and often poor quality.  It was a full decade before the Sarin plant at Stalingrad was in full production.  The year before, in 1958, Boris Libman was named chief engineer at the Stalingrad plant.  In 1961 he led development of a new facility to produce Soman nerve agent.  Again poor quality parts slowed development of the plant.  By 1963, Soviet plans for war against NATO called for a surprise attack with overwhelming use of chemical agents, including nerve gas.  Libman was under considerable political pressure to get the Soman line in production.

So he cut corners.  In particular, the Stalingrad plant had a containment pond with toxic breakdown products of nerve agents in concentrations 100 times acceptable levels.  In February 1965, snow melt caused flooding throughout the region.  The containment pond overflowed its dikes and spilled into the Volga River.  In less than two days the dike was repaired and no immediate problems were evident. 

But on June 15 tens of thousands of sturgeon floated belly up in the Volga, making the river white with dead fish for 50 miles downstream from Stalingrad.  Experts determined that it took four months for the toxins to build up to deadly levels.  Outrage swept down the river and across the region.  The government needed a scapegoat.  On March 9, 1966, Boris Libman was stripped of the Lenin prize he earned in building the Stalingrad plant, fined two years pay, and sentenced to two years at a labor camp. 

Unlike so many others, Libman’s tale does not end in a Soviet labor camp.  After just a year he was released: the Soman plant was so complicated that the Soviets could find no one else who could run it.  Boris returned to the land of the living once again.

In 1999 he left the Russian Federation and came to America. He lived in Philadelphia until his death a decade ago. 

Some of the mess created by chemical weapons was eventually cleaned up by French chemists, including Armand Lattes.

Nearly 100,000 Tanks in Service Around the World--Most are Russian

Recently, I wrote an article about the new Russian T-14 tank as a real innovation in a world that is moving away from armored forces.  While writing the article I found a Wikipedia page listing all the tanks in service around the world by country.  While the page is useful, it can't be sorted.

So I made a spreadsheet with all the tanks by country so I could sort it and add up numbers.

The first number is the total of all tanks in service or in reserve for all armies in the world:

99,534 tanks

Wow!  The world is not building a lot of new tanks, but there are a lot in service. 

Wikipedia lists 142 countries with armies.  Of those, 28 have no tanks, leaving 114 countries with armored forces.  From Afghanistan with 771 tanks to Zimbabwe with 77 tanks, it is clear that Russian-made tanks are the backbone of the world's armored united.  Of those 99,534 tanks in service around the world, Russia made 54,853.  

Of the 114 countries with tanks, 49 have Russian-made T-55 tanks for a total of 13,776 tanks.  Fewer countries have the T-72 tank, but including Russian reserves, there are 20,478 T-72s in service.  These are by far the tanks in widest use around the world.

By comparison, the world's number two tank maker is the United States with 15, 538 tanks in more than 20 countries.  About a third of American-built tanks in world service are M48/M60 variants, mostly M60A3s.  The rest are the M1 Abrams in its various forms.  

M1A1 Abrams

The next biggest tank maker is China with 10,902 tanks in service in fewer than 20 countries.  But the Chinese tanks owe a lot to Russian design.  

Chinese Type 69 owes a lot to Russian design

Germany is the number four supplier of tanks with 4,395 Leopards in many variants in service in more than a dozen countries.  

In yet another example of the 80/20 rule dominating all of life, the top four tank-making countries made more than 95,000 of the 99,000 tanks in service in the world.  France and Great Britain are the next leading suppliers with a dozen other countries making tanks for their own use including Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand.  

The two countries that have the most serious on-going development of tanks are Russia and Israel.  The T-14 Armata and the latest Israeli Merkava show these two countries as the most committed to the future of armored warfare. 

Israeli Merkava

The smallest armored force in the world is Malawi with one T-55 tank.  The largest is Russia with almost 22,000, or about one in five of all the tanks in the world.  

One reason countries keep tanks is that they have no scrap value. Armor costs more to melt than the value of the recovered metal.  When I was a tank commander in the 70s and 80s, we used old M47 tanks as targets.

I cannot post a spreadsheet on blogger, but if you want a copy I would be happy to send it.  Email me at ngussman@yahoo.com if you want a copy.

Many Tanks...

Soviet Era Propaganda Reminds Me of East-West Border, And Advertising

Yesterday was the first day of a class I am taking about the Cold War Era in books, film, and images, like the one above.  Today we saw Soviet propaganda films from 1924 to the 1960s and discussed several propaganda posters.  Before class we read a 30-page article about Soviet cartoons and cartoonists.  

Among the cartoonists, Boris Efimov story was chilling.  He lived from the beginning of the 20th century, either 1899 or 1900 until 2008.  He drew cartoons for the entire Soviet era.  

In interviews he said he drew what he was told to draw, Soviets as heroes, westerners as fat and greedy.  In his tale, I remembered both seeing Soviet posters when I was stationed in Germany in the 1970s and at home in newspapers and on TV.  

I worked at an ad agency for 13 years and have worked in marketing communications of various kinds for the past 30 years.  What stands out in the Soviet images is how well they controlled their "brand."  From the 1920s to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the image of the Soviet citizen/worker/soldier was a strong, tall, clean, happy man or woman.  The capitalist enemy was fat, greedy, foolish and deceptive.

If you are going to create and impression through media, this control is very important.  And as the world changes, the brand has to stay consistent.  So with Ford, the brand image is quality, reliability, and performance though the actual product has changed from a Model T to a Ford GT.

The brand image is the coolest car on the road whether it's 1908 or 2015.  And the Soviet's controlled their image just that well--and exploited every weakness in their enemies.

Their propaganda was effective enough to keep me and 250,000 other American soldiers permanently stationed in Germany to defend Western Europe from an attack we thought could come at any time.  Our tanks were fully loaded with cannon ammunition and ready to fight when World War 3 started.  When we went to the border, we saw this on the other side of the fence.

They convinced us!