On this day 1961 the Berlin Wall began construction –behind a cordon of troops facing east, backs towards their enemy, weapons at the ready, and under orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape the Worker’s Paradise.

In time the entire east/west line splitting Germany was fenced and mined, and covered by machine gun emplacements.

This time the line is much further east, which pisses off the Kremlin, but it should remember history, as Medvedev advises, and that USSR paid nothing back for the 38,000 and 58,000 American soldiers who died fighting USSR-fomented wars in Korea and Vietnam.