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Nikita Khruschev
Was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War.
He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization. -
Leonid Brezhnev
Khrushchev is replaced as first secretary of the Communist Party by Leonid Brezhnev; Aleksey Kosygin becomes prime minister.
Was the General Secretary of the Central Commitee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , predising over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. During his rule , the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time. -
Brezhnev Era (part 1)
1968 - Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to stem a trend towards liberalisation; "Brezhnev doctrine" enunciated, giving communist countries the right to intervene in other communist states whose policies threatened the international communist movement.
1969 - Soviet and Chinese troops clash across the border. -
Brezhnev Era (part 2)
Soviet and Chinese troops clash across the border.Soviet Union and US sign SALT-1 arms control agreement, heralding the start of detente.
Soviet Union agrees to ease its emigration policy in return for most-favoured-nation trade status with the US.
Brezhnev elected president under new constitution.
Soviet Union and US sign SALT-2 agreement;
Soviet troops invade Afghanistan, formally ending the period of detente with the West.
Brezhnev dies and is replaced by KGB chief Yuri Andropov. -
Yuri Andropov
was a Soviet politician who was ambassador to Hungary from 1954 to 1957, during which time he was involved in the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, and then Chairman of the KGB from 1967 until 1982. Later in 1982, he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a position he held until his death fifteen months later. -
Konstantin Chernenko
was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985. Chernenko was also Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 11 April 1984 until his death. -
Chernobyl Disaster
was a catastrophic nuclear accident. During a late night safety test which simulated a station blackout power-failure and in which safety systems were deliberately turned off, a combination of inherent reactor design flaws, together with the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions that flashed water into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite fire -
Demokratizatsiya
as a slogan introduced by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. Gorbachev's Demokratizatsiya meant the introduction of multi-candidate—though not multiparty—elections for local Communist Party (CPSU) and Soviets. In this way, he hoped to rejuvenate the party with progressive personnel who would carry out his institutional and policy reforms. -
Mikhail Gorbachev
He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991. Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. Under this program, the role of the Communist Party inadvertently led to crisis-level political instability with a surge of regional nationalist and anti-communist activism culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. -
Foreign Policies
Gorbachev sought to distance the USSR from countries from Eastern Europe, he encouraged the state to follow their own path. The USSR would engage in a policy of non-intervention in the Warsaw Pact countries, a complete negation of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Also the Soviets had over 100000 troops stationed in Afghannistan with no clear objective. -
Perestroika
was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s until 1991 widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost.T he literal meaning of perestroika is “restructuring”, referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system. -
Glasnost
Its meaning "publicity" in the sense "the state of being open to public knowledge" has been used in Russian at least since the end of the 18th century.[1] In the Russian Empire of the later 19th century the latter meaning was particularly associated with reforms of the judicial system, ensuring that the press and the public could attend court hearings and that the sentence was also read out in public.
