Russia at war 1941-1945

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In his speech before the American University in Washington on June 10, 1963—a speech that foreshadowed the Moscow test-ban treaty two months later—the late President

Kennedy said:

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries (the USA and the Soviet

Union) have in common, none is stronger than the mutual abhorrence of war.

Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with

each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the

Russians suffered in the course of the Second World War.

And he went on to say:

At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's [European] territory, including nearly

two-thirds of its industrial base, were turned into a waste-land.

Some six months later, in a less conciliatory-sounding speech at Kalinin, delivered in the presence of Fidel Castro, Khrushchev thundered against the "imperialists", urged them to clear out of Panama "before they got kicked out", swore that the Soviet Union could defend Cuba from rocket sites on Russian territory, and, with more than usual truculence, declared:

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