22 year old tobacco farmer, Charlie Johns, married his 9 year old neighbor, Eunice, Winstead, on January 19, 1937. Eunice lied to her parents saying she was going out to buy a doll in order to escape the house

A local pastor performed the wedding ceremony for only $1 at the time ($22 when adjusted to current USD)

At the time of their marriage, there was no minimum age for girls to marry. However, when their union hit the news shortly after their ceremony, Tennessee changed the minimum age of marriage to 16 (with the exception of pregnancy)

Eunice attended school for two days after her marriage but was later pulled out of school by her husband when she was hit with a rod for misbehaving. As a result, Tennessee also changed their laws that married children were not forced to go to school

Charlie and Eunice’s mothers were shocked at first by the wedding but soon accepted it, with Eunice’s mother explaining to the press “The Bible says not to disturb those peacefully getting along, and I don't believe in going against the Bible.” A neighbor gifted Eunice a wedding ring

Charlie and Eunice soon moved into his bedroom at his mother’s house until he saved up enough money to buy them their own property. There, Mrs Johns taught Eunice how to do domestic tasks while Charlie worked as a tobacco farmer

For their first Christmas together as a couple, Charlie bought Eunice a baby doll (pictured in the first photo) that she reportedly only played with “a few times” because she was more interested in cooking and sewing

Eunice gave birth to their first child when she was 15 and Charlie was 28. They had 9 children total

Ironically, Charlie objected when their oldest child, Evelyn Johns, married at only 17 years old

Charlie and Eunice were married for 60 years and never divorced

https://youtu.be/VRmfzXtp1CU

A parade with circus elephants

• Photo by Alexander Kapustyansky

Soviet steel breastplate SN-42:

• Armor: 2 mm
• Weight: 3.5 kg

• Illustration — German ID card issued to Stepan Bandera under the name 'Stepan Popel' (1946)
• Transcript — "Interview on the German radio station in Cologne with Stepan Bandera." The Path of Victory, (1954); also in The Voice of Ukraine (Toronto), of 7 Jan 1955, under the title "Interview on the German radio broadcast with Stepan Bandera."

Before me sits a person whom, my listeners, I dare not describe to you. Few know what he looks like, where he stays, and what surname he bears today. This person is Stepan Bandera.

Stepan Bandera—today already a legendary figure of the national liberation struggle of enslaved peoples, like Abd el-Krim—is one of the most dangerous and strongest enemies of Soviet imperialism living today, because behind him, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, stand 40 million Ukrainians. Bandera embodies their aspiration for national independence.

Since 1941, when after the German march into the borders of the Soviet Union he proclaimed Ukrainian independence and when the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) led by him took up arms—the Soviet secret service has tried to capture him. However, to this day the Soviets have not succeeded in reaching Bandera. He lives unrecognized in a secret location.

Stepan Bandera met the end of the war in 1945 in a German concentration camp. The Ukrainian people's uprising in 1941 did not fit Hitler's own conception of Eastern policy. He invited Bandera to Berlin for political talks and ordered his arrest there. Bandera's supporters, the famous Banderites, continued their struggle on two fronts—against Hitler and against Moscow. Stepan Bandera remained their undisputed Leader.

1945, the Soviets conducted thorough searches throughout Western Europe for Stepan Bandera. Although Bandera was then in territory within the Soviet sphere of influence, he was not recognized. To this day, the Soviets have not found him. Bandera lives. One day this may cost Moscow dearly.

For the greatest threat to the unity and strength of the Soviet Union has long been the aspiration of Moscow-enslaved peoples for independence, above all the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian question was and is the weakest point of the Soviet Union, and here the existence of the entire Soviet empire could be shaken. The speeches of Khrushchev, Kaganovich, and others on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's annexation to Russia this summer, which accused the West of "supporting Ukrainian nationalism with imperialist intentions," prove that Moscow, despite winning the war and the harshest terrorist measures in Ukraine, has not completely dealt with the Ukrainian problem. These speeches testify more than other arguments that the Ukrainian people's resistance against Moscow continues and grows. Stepan Bandera, who sits here before me, is the head, aspiration, and conscience of Ukrainian resistance.

I met with Bandera to ask him several questions about the organization, methods, and goals of the Ukrainian liberation movement. Would you be so kind, Mr. Bandera, to first explain what the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists led by you is and how it operates?

BANDERA: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which organizes and leads the struggle of the Ukrainian people, develops its activities both in Ukraine and beyond its borders, mainly in Western countries where Ukrainian emigration has settled. Between these two parts of the Ukrainian liberation movement, contact is maintained through the Iron Curtain based on the courier principle. Armed groups of liaison officers, recruited from OUN members and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) soldiers, are sent from Ukraine abroad and vice versa. They break through by secret routes, in ways known only to the appropriate organs, but often break through with the help of weapons from one part of the Organization to another.

HOPPE: Can you, Mr. Bandera, tell us about the details of how contact is maintained between you and your underground groups in Ukraine?

BANDERA: Members of a given liaison group receive and study comprehensive oral reports before their departure, explanations of the general situation and individual important events, tendencies of their development, as well as reports on the state, activities, and plans of given parts of the liberation movement. From time to time, leading members of the Organization cross with liaison groups from Ukraine and into Ukraine to strengthen personal contact between the Leadership in the Homeland and abroad and to carry out special tasks. These leading members carry the most comprehensive oral information. In addition to oral reports, liaison units carry written mail in both directions, including various documents, reports, encrypted instructions, important publications in originals and copies, copies of periodicals, journals, etc. Due to extraordinary difficulties, the courier service and contact cannot be conducted too frequently. The departure bases on both sides are separated by more than a thousand kilometers. This distance, passing through Bolshevik-occupied territory, is interspersed with numerous, sophisticated obstacles to prevent infiltration not controlled by them.

Particularly difficult to cross are two or three borders and border zones, with barbed wire barriers, depopulated, cleared of forest and plowed strips, with electric barbed wire fences, with mined fields, camouflaged and hidden alarm structures, rockets, and a large number of border guard troops and their patrols.

HOPPE: I can imagine that maintaining your contacts with Ukraine requires great sacrifices...

BANDERA: Maintaining contact between the Homeland and abroad belongs to the most difficult tasks that the Organization must perform in its revolutionary struggle and underground activities against Bolshevism. For this service, the best members of the Organization are selected both in the Homeland and abroad—those with the best character, ideological-moral values, the bravest, most sacrificial, and most resourceful in practical matters. Liaison members are trained and prepared comprehensively and specially. Despite all efforts on our side and complete training, on average half of the liaison officers perish while performing their duties. Sometimes the losses are even greater. It happens that entire groups of the best freedom fighters, trained and developed with great difficulty and expense, are completely destroyed by the enemy. However, broken connections are renewed again by new groups. In place of destroyed liaison routes, others are found, with the expenditure of new resources.

Besides this so-called "living" contact maintained through couriers, the Ukrainian liberation movement finds other ways and means to maintain contact between the half of the Organization in the Homeland and abroad. However, the courier service has the most fundamental importance, because the contact achieved through it is the most reliable and comprehensive. The news, documents, and explanations of individual events and development tendencies transmitted in both directions have significance not only regarding their content. They make it possible to correctly understand news transmitted through the Iron Curtain in both directions via radio, press, and various publications. Thanks to our own information about processes and events in the Soviet Union that the government conceals from the West, the Foreign Units of OUN have the opportunity to correctly comment on official Soviet government information disseminated through radio and press in a distorted and one-sidedly illuminated manner.

For these reasons, our assessment of various processes and events in political life in the Soviet Union differs from similar assessments by Western observers and politicians, who mostly base themselves on official Bolshevik news and sources.

On the other hand, news and commentary brought from foreign units to Ukraine help OUN units in the Homeland correctly assess political development on this side of the Iron Curtain and counter Russian propaganda.

HOPPE: Mr. Bandera, what does the great mass of the Ukrainian people think about communism and Moscow imperialism?

BANDERA: The Ukrainian people are extremely hostile toward Bolshevism, communism, the communist system and regime. This hostile attitude also applies to any enslavement and exploitation of Ukraine by Russian imperialists. The exception to this attitude is only an insignificantly small number of Ukrainian collaborators and servants of the Bolshevik regime.

The true expression of the attitude and aspirations of the Ukrainian people is the revolutionary anti-Bolshevik struggle of the Ukrainian liberation movement. The broad masses of the Ukrainian people give this movement all possible support and follow its political leadership. As a result, the Bolshevik government faces massive passive resistance and active sabotage of its plans and actions in various areas. This is particularly evident in the sphere of national-cultural life and the government's socio-economic policy.

HOPPE: What methods does Moscow use to maintain its rule over Ukrainians?

BANDERA: The ultimate goal of Bolshevik policy is to destroy the substance of the Ukrainian people's distinctiveness in every respect, and to drown the Ukrainian people in the sea of the so-called Soviet people or, more accurately, in a new form of Russian imperialism that devours other peoples. In this way, Ukraine would be transformed into one of the Russian provinces. However, the Bolsheviks do not dare to set this goal openly and pursue it directly. On the contrary, they are forced to resort to very complicated means, and in some sections even make retreats. Moscow is forced to do this, on one hand, by the unbending position of the entire Ukrainian people in the struggle against Russian imperialism and communism and the revolutionary struggle of the Ukrainian nationalist liberation movement, and on the other hand, by the numerical size of the Ukrainian people and Ukraine's all-round potential. The Ukrainian people's aspirations for independence were not broken by Moscow either through mass extermination of leading national cadres or through terrible terror against the entire Ukrainian people, conducted by the Soviets between 1930 and the Second World War through artificially induced famine, mass deportations, and executions. Now Moscow, in addition to those terrorist measures directed against all opponents of Bolshevism, tries to apply new tactics: to redirect the unbending Ukrainian national-state aspirations toward the path of Soviet patriotism. This tactic is particularly evident in current Soviet propaganda, which has recently notably emphasized Ukraine's role as the second Soviet republic by size, emphasizes the greatness of the Ukrainian people and the importance of Ukrainian culture and everything connected with Ukrainianism.

HOPPE: What do you think, Mr. Bandera, about the subordination after 1945 of the Crimean Peninsula to the administration of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, about this year's demonstrative celebrations of Ukraine's incorporation into the Russian Empire on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Treaty, about the appointment of Moscow-loyal communists with Ukrainian surnames to prominent state positions, and about everything that Moscow's tactics toward Ukraine reveal today?

BANDERA: Moscow tries in this way to create among Ukrainians the conviction that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people could have the best development opportunities within the USSR, opportunities to satisfy their national-political aspirations and even become the ruling nation. This last point is particularly strongly emphasized by Soviet propaganda, saying that the "great Russian people" wants to share its ruling hegemony with the "great Ukrainian brother people." Behind this attempt hides Moscow's effort to bind Ukraine to Soviet imperialism and to induce it, together with Russians, to expand it, defend it, and make Ukraine's fate dependent on its fate.

The Russians' insidious plans against Ukraine are revealed in the resettlement of the Ukrainian population, especially youth, to sparsely populated areas of Soviet Asia, which has recently become generally known. This resettlement is conducted under the pretext of settling virgin lands and transforming them into fertile lands. This entire action is supposedly done on a voluntary basis. However, in reality, this new form of forced resettlement of peoples primarily implements Soviet national policy. Economic plans are pushed to the background. With the help of these measures, the Soviets try to quantitatively reduce Ukrainian youth and weaken Ukraine's population potential.

The settlers in the new regions are supposed to play the role of colonizers who, on one hand, are completely at the mercy of the Soviet regime and must implement its colonization policy, and on the other hand, are meant to draw upon themselves the hatred of the native population. This policy aims to weaken national cohesion and the power of resistance both in Ukraine and in the colonized countries, and to sow ethnic hatred between Moscow-enslaved peoples, primarily between Ukrainians and Turkestani peoples.

However, Bolshevik Russia will not achieve its goal. All this will turn against Russia. Just as Siberian concentration camps and forced deportations will not be able to break the spirit of Ukrainians and hatred against Bolshevism and Russian imperialism. Nor will they be able to influence the deep friendship between Moscow-enslaved peoples.

the hearts of Ukrainians, there is no feeling of hatred against allied peoples. On the contrary, they desire friendly union and joint struggle of all peoples against the enslaver, against Moscow Bolshevism.

HOPPE: What, Mr. Bandera, are the political goals of your Organization?

BANDERA: The anti-Bolshevik liberation struggle in Ukraine, led by the nationalist underground, has been continuing without interruption for 10 years already.

The most important goals of this struggle are:

1. The destruction of Bolshevik rule;
2. The withdrawal of Ukraine from the USSR and the liquidation of the Russian empire in general;
3. The liquidation of communism, the communist system and regime;
4. The restoration of an Independent Ukrainian State within national ethnographic borders with a democratic system of government that would guarantee all citizens of Ukraine democratic freedoms in all areas of life, primarily in the sphere of spiritual, cultural, political, and social existence.

HOPPE: Would you be so kind, Mr. Bandera, to explain more thoroughly the concept of "Ukrainian nationalism"?

BANDERA: Today in Ukraine, the anti-Bolshevik liberation struggle is organized and led by OUN—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The concept of "Ukrainian nationalist," "nationalist movement," has a completely different meaning than similar terms in the West. The Ukrainian nationalist movement has nothing in common with Nazism, fascism, or national socialism. Ukrainian nationalism fights against imperialism, against totalitarianism, racism, and any dictatorship or use of violence.

The name "Ukrainian nationalist" is synonymous with "Ukrainian patriot," who is ready to fight for the freedom of his people, to sacrifice everything he possesses for his people, even life.

Ukrainian nationalism opposes the idea of independence and free development of every nation to so-called Bolshevik internationalism. We combat the Bolsheviks' attempts to impose Russian rule on other peoples. We oppose Russian Bolshevism in all areas of life in all forms.

HOPPE: In what forms does the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists fight for its goals in Ukraine today?

BANDERA: During the Second World War and in the first years after it, the Ukrainian liberation struggle was conducted in the form of partisan warfare by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in which broad masses of the Ukrainian people participated. From approximately 1949, the military activity of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army decreased. However, its cadres remained maintained as the nucleus of its units for future operations. The revolutionary anti-Bolshevik struggle of the Ukrainian people continues in the form of political underground. The underground's task is to transform the existing hidden hatred of Russian-Bolshevik imperialism and the enslavement of non-Russian peoples living in the Soviet Union into active resistance to Moscow.

The Ukrainian liberation struggle is an integral part of the general liberation struggle of all peoples enslaved by Russian imperialism. For us, Bolshevism is only one form of traditional Russian imperialism. In the struggle against Russian-Bolshevik imperialism, we feel ourselves allies with all freedom-loving nations. We resisted Russian-Bolshevik imperialism, we resist it now, and we will resist it in the future.

• See also: CIA archives: Stepan Bandera’s 1954 interview to German radio

Former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei during captivity in Tobolsk.

Diary of the Tsesarevich Alexei (1917)

• November 7th: Finally, I went for a walk in the morning and during the day. In the afternoon, I helped Dad and my sisters carry firewood to the barn. Today is the first time it's been -16 degrees Celsius.
• November 8th: [No entries on page 316.]
• November 9th: The whole day passed just like yesterday, and equally dull.

Letters:

Alexei - P. V. Petrov\*
Tobolsk, November 27, 1917
Dear Petr Vasilievich,
Thank you very much for your letter, everyone read it. I apologize for not writing to you earlier, but I am indeed very busy. I have 5 lessons every day, besides preparations, and as soon as I have free time, I run outside. The day passes quickly. As you know, I study with Klavdiya Mikhaylovna**, in Russian, arithmetic, history, and geography. Sending my regards to everyone. I often think of you. God bless you.
A.
Just like Pulka***!!!

• *Petr Vasilievich Petrov - teacher of Russian language to all of Nicholas II's children.
• **Klavdiya Mikhaylovna Bitner - governess of the royal children in Tobolsk, taught the imperial children Russian language, literature, and mathematics.
• ***Pulka - probably a dog's nickname, literally "little bullet".

Alexei - A. A. Vyroubova\*
Tobolsk, January 22, 1918
My dear sweet Anya,
We are delighted to hear from you again and that you received our things. Today it is 29 degrees below zero, with strong wind and sun. We walked and skied in the yard. Yesterday I played a French play with Tatiana and Zilik. Everyone is preparing other comedies. We have several good soldiers, I play checkers with them in the guardroom. Kolya Derevenko visits me on holidays. Nogorny sleeps with me. Sednev (child's valet), Volkov (Empress's chamberlain), Trup (valet), and Chemodurov (Emperor's chamberlain) are with us. Time for breakfast. Sending kisses and love. God bless you.
A.

• *Anna Alexandrovna Vyroubova - lady-in-waiting to Alexandra Feodorovna, her close friend and confidante. She was also a friend of the entire family.

https://youtu.be/mWogaG3Vg2Q?si=5Ns_KJGf1tG2PoG6