-
The Last of Romanov Family
The Romanov Dynasty (1613 to 1917) was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia. During the Romanov reign Russia became and remained a major European power. On July 16-17, 1918 at midnight, the last of the czars, Nicholas II, and his entire family, were massacred at Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, upon orders from bolsheviks.
The family was believed to be buried not far from Ekaterinburg in a region known as Ganina Yama, but they were not found until early in 1979, when their remains were fi -
Creation of Pulitburo
Instead of normal election the politburo governed the country.It had supreme control over the Soviet government created in Russia by the Bolshevik Party. It was the former central policy-making and governing body of the Communist party of the Soviet Union -
Treaty of Brest-Livosk
A conference between a Russian delegations, lead by Leon Trotsky and German representatives began at Brest-Litovsk. It then resulted in the Russians surrendering the Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces, the Caucasus and Poland.
It was bad for the soviets because they lost the land important to their economy. -
Russian Civil War
Between 1918 and 1921. The civil war occurred because after November 1917, when the provisional Government was overthrown, many groups had formed that opposed Lenin’s Bolsheviks. This was a conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies -
Stanlin's Five Year Plan
The first Five Year Plan introduced in 1928, concentrated on the development of iron and steel, machine-tools, electric power and transport. He demanded a lot from the workers, and set high goals. For the ones that excelled in their work, they were rewarded with higher wages.
The second five year plan was from 1933 to 1937.The third five year plan was from 1938 to 1941 when the war interrupted it. Each plan was made to set and increase industrial productions. -
World War ll
Adolph Hitler and the Nazis had a deep hatred for Russian communists. On April 30, as the Soviets were battling through the streets of his city, and at this time Adolph Hitler killed himself. On May 2, 1945, Soviet troops completed the capture of Berlin and all remaining German troops surrendered within a few days. The war in Europe was over. The people of the Soviet Union suffered greatly during the war. Well over 20 million men and women were killed -- many of them civilians. However, the USSR -
Joe 1
It was the first nuclear test by the soviet union done in secrecy, until Truman announced to America that they did so. Joe 1 is the code name that America gave it, however in Russia they called is “First Lighting”. The design was made similar to American’s “Fat Man” -
Hydrogen Bomb
The hydrogen bomb was one of the biggest successes of the soviet union. As an original design, the Hydrogen Bomb also known as Tsar Bomba, possessed a huge threat to the world. The project was organized by the First Chief Directorate under Lavrentii Beria, Minister of State Security. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact is the name commonly given to the treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland in 1955 and was officially called 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance'. Following the diminishing power of the USSR in the 1980s and the eventual fall of Communism the treaty became redundant. The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved in Prague in 1991, after successive governments wit -
Sputnik
October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball. The Sputnik launch changed everything. As a technical achievement, Sputnik caught the world's attention. -
Laika and Sputnik 3
Soviet scientists nicknamed her Laika (Russian for "Barker"). Before entering the space program she was first a stray in the streets of Moscow. Before Sputnik 2, rockets had been launched by both the Soviet Union and the U.S. with animals on board, like mice, dogs and monkeys, but Laika was the first to reach the upper layers of the atmosphere in low Earth orbit.
Sputnik 3 was launched on May 15, 1958. It was shaped like a cone, and had many I instruments made into it to measure different thing -
Creation of Berlin Wall
At the end of World War II, the Allied powers divided conquered Germany into four zones. The Berlin Wall was the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. However, it was also the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War. -
1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia
On august 21, 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia along with four other Warsaw pact countries. It all started when Czechoslovakia rejected the Soviet Union's call for more military integration within the Warsaw Pact and sought greater input in planning and strategy for the Warsaw Pact's non-Soviet members. All these debates heated up in 1968 during the period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring. On August 20, 1968, Warsaw Pact forces, including troops from Bulgaria, -
SALT 1
This was the first series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. This was a treaty limiting the production of nuclear weapons, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It extended from November 1969 to May 1972. During that period the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the first agreements to place limits and restraints on some of their central and most important armaments. -
Soviet Afghan War
The communist party in Afghanistan was first formed in 1965, by a man named, Daoud. He wasn’t a communist but an ally of the soviets. In 1763 he was forced to resign because of his dependency of the soviets. In 1973 he came back, and began to change his policies. He also attempted to reconcile with Pakistan which aggravated the Soviets. Thus, in April 1978, the Afghani communists, with the help of the Soviets, assassinated Daoud. Then there was an uprising from the middle class and peasants weak -
SALT 2
SALT II was a controversial experiment of negotiations between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev from 1977 to 1979 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The primary goal of SALT II was to replace the Interim Agreement with a long-term comprehensive Treaty providing broad limits on strategic offensive weapons systems. -
Glasnost
Glasnost sought to ease the strict social controls imposed by the government. Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and allowed citizens to express divergent views. anything now was fair game. -
Perestroika
It was a program instituted in the Soviet Union by Makhail Gorbachev, in the mid-1980s to restructure Soviet economic and political policy. It has multiple meanings in 1958…
Creating a dependable and effective mechanism for acceleration of social and economic progress and giving it greater dynamism.
Perestroika means mass initiative. It is the conference of development of democracy, socialist self-government -
Gorbachev becomes into power
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped onto the world stage in March 1985 as the new leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it was immediately clear that he was different from his predecessors. Gorbachev, then 54, was significantly younger than the aging party members who had led the Communist superpower in previous decades.
Gorbachev took a new approach toward addressing these problems: He introduced a reform program that embodied two overarching concepts.
Gorbachev's internal re -
Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel. The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind.
The accident caused the largest uncontrolled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for any civilian operation, and large quantities of radioactive substances were released into the air for about 10 days. This caused serious soc -
Free Elections in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary
After a lot of Eastern Europe had been suffering from poverty and bad economies in December, 1988, Gorbachev announced in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that by 1991 he intended to pull Soviet tanks and troops out of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In early July, Gorbachev pledged that the Poles and Hungarians were free to determine their own future, giving the freedom that they needed. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
As Communism began to falter in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in 1988 and 1989, new exodus points were opened to East Germans who wanted to flee to the West. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9, 1989, an announcement made by East German government official Günter Schabowski stated, "Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany) or West Berlin." On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western f -
Fall of Berlin Wall
As Communism began to lessen in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in 1988 and 1989, new exodus points were opened to East Germans who wanted to flee to the West. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9, 1989, an announcement made by East German government official Günter Schabowski stated, "Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany) or West Berlin." On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western f -
Latvia and Lithuania Protests
The January Events took place in Lithuania between January 11 and 13, 1991 in the aftermath of the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. As a result of Soviet Military’s actions, 13 civilians were killed and more than 1000 injured. The prostests were all over mainly becuase of unemployment and economic crisis. -
Boris Yeltsin Becomes President
Became president of Russia in 1990. In 1991 he became the first popularly elected leader in the country’s history, guiding Russia through a stormy decade of political and economic retrenching until his resignation on the eve of 2000. Vowing to change Russia’s economy to a free market economy endorsed by liberalization and privatization, Yeltsin was elected to a second term in 1996. He remained President until December 31, 1999 -
Grobachev Steps Down
While Gorbachev's political initiatives were positive for freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies, the economic policy of his government gradually brought the country close to disaster.
