The Soviet Union or USSR (1922–1991) was a socialist state in Eurasia. After the 1924 death of founding leader Lenin (who led the October Revolution in 1917), Stalin established a planned economy and suppressed political opposition. After World War II, the Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's ...
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65 views
What uniform did the Supreme State Arbiter of the USSR wear?
What uniform did the Supreme State Arbiter (главный государственный арбитр) of the USSR wear?
I think I saw it on a site before but I cannot find it now.
6
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1answer
105 views
Did American policymakers seriously consider scaling down Lend Lease Aid to the Soviet Union after the battle of Kursk?
In 1941, Senator (and future President) Harry Truman famously said, "If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany." ...
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1answer
82 views
What aspects of Soviet life were not controlled by Stalin?
Stalinism controlled social life through propaganda, political life through the use of political crime and the politicization of life and the workers life, with proletarianism dominating all aspects ...
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2answers
87 views
Is speaking Russian a privileged lingual habit in Ukraine nowadays? [closed]
Wiki says:
In independent Ukraine, although Russian is not an official language of the country, it continues to hold a privileged position and is widely spoken, in particular in regions of Ukraine ...
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0answers
53 views
Was Ayatollah Khamenei a KGB spy before the 1979 revolution?
(1) Was Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, a graduate of the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow?
(2) If the answer to (1) is 'yes', then is there evidence he had ...
4
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1answer
43 views
Were members of Soviet Republican Communist Parties also members of the CPSU?
I know that each Soviet Republic X had its own Communist Party of X. Question is: were members of these parties also members of the CPSU?
I am interested here only in the formal side of things - I'd ...
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0answers
43 views
Did the USSR push Syria into war with Israel in 1982?
Did the USSR push Syria into war with Israel in 1982? Did they push other Arab countries into war with Israel ever?
Was there ever instance when the USSR succeeded to push a country with reluctant ...
7
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2answers
128 views
Did the poor performance of the Red Army in the Winter War significantly contribute to German underestimation of the USSR's military capacity?
Wikipedia says in the article on the Winter War:
Perhaps more importantly, the very poor performance of the Red Army
encouraged Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be
...
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2answers
79 views
Was the N.E.P. of Russia successful in terms of economics?
The Soviet's New Economic Plan was indeed a successful plan in establishing a comparatively strong postwar economy for the Soviet Union, but there were many imperfections: food prices fluctuated ...
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votes
1answer
110 views
Did Gorbachev ever admit that his intention was to destroy Communism?
As I remember the 1980s and the Perestroika epoch, the reforms were advertised to the people as "return to Leninist principles", even deeper implementation of Socialism. The posters claimed it was ...
1
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1answer
92 views
Was it Stalin behind the idea of universal elections in the USSR?
Recently I have read an article that claimed that Stalin wanted to introduce competitive, alternative elections in the USSR while the regional secretaries were strongly against the idea and pushed for ...
3
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3answers
194 views
Is this true that the Soviet Army soldiers had no helmets in the beginning of WW2?
Is this true that the Soviet Army was so poorly equipped by the WW2 that soldiers had no helmets?
7
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2answers
82 views
How did the Chinese help Khrushchev?
I read this in the source cited in this answer
Initially the Soviet assistance in China’s nuclear programme was
limited to the civil nuclear energy field. However, Moscow’s attitude
shifted in ...
8
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0answers
115 views
What was the situation of homosexuals in the early Soviet Union?
Between 1917 and 1930, homosexuality was decriminalised in the Soviet Union. From the Wikipedia article on LGBT history in Russia:
The Russian Communist Inessa Armand publicly endorsed both ...
3
votes
2answers
86 views
Motivation Behind the USSR Assisting China's Nuclear Program
What motivated the USSR to assist China with the development of Nuclear Weapons?
Why would the USSR want China to have this technology during the 1950s and early 1960s? What did they get out of this ...
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0answers
27 views
What was Vyshinsky's position about extrajudical repressions in the USSR?
Vyshinsky was the prosecutor-general of the USSR who is mosly known for his participation in the Moscow show trials of the 1930s.
But what was his position regarding the extrajudical repressions?
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1answer
123 views
How many non-partisan (independent) legislature members were in the USA compared to the USSR?
How many legislature members there were who were not members of any party in the USA compared to the USSR during the Cold War and now?
8
votes
2answers
155 views
Were Soviet warships allowed to use the Panama canal?
During the Cold War, were Soviet naval vessels allowed to use the Panama canal?
I'm aware that no Soviet warships happened to use the canal during the Cold War. Was there a rule aganst them ...
9
votes
1answer
395 views
Did the Soviet Union know when DEFCON levels changed?
The US military uses a scale of alert readiness called DEFCON, with DEFCON 5 being the lowest alert level and DEFCON 1 being the highest, preparing for imminent nuclear war. At least once during the ...
11
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2answers
267 views
What was the role of the Soviet Navy during WWII?
Most books of WWII speak of the naval battles of allied and axis powers during the war, but none about the Soviet navy. The soviets had an active fleet at the time, why did it not engage the Germans ...
10
votes
1answer
146 views
Austria and Iron Curtain during Cold War
Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech from 1946 contains the following famous passage:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain
has descended across the ...
5
votes
2answers
157 views
Why was Stalin so opposed to genetics?
He violently persecuted genetics. Why?
Here is one notable example:
Vavilov repeatedly criticised the non-Mendelian concepts of Trofim
Lysenko, who won the support of Joseph Stalin. As a ...
5
votes
1answer
169 views
Interaction between Ataturk and Lenin
Are there any records related to the relations between Turkey and USSR in 1920's? I know about the letter from Ataturk to Lenin (in Turkish) but nothing more.
3
votes
3answers
202 views
Stalingrad - the German perspective?
I'm quite interested in Stalingrad and have started reading a bit regarding the battle itself and have seen that weather had played quite a significant factor in halting the German advance. (Reading ...
8
votes
3answers
183 views
What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
For all these countries that the Red Army entered (Poland, Romania, part of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary), the procedure was straightforward. Once the Soviets beat the Germans they become de facto ...
4
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2answers
164 views
How many people were affected by the Golodomor [Famine-Genocide in Ukraine]
How many people were affected during the famine? Are there any sources for Soviet records on the Golodomor?
0
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0answers
108 views
Did the US destroy all equipment returned after the war from the USSR? [closed]
According the land lease terms all the equipment shipped to the USSR during WWII had to be returned to the US after the war if not lost in fighting.
But according to some memoirs of Russian sailors, ...
18
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2answers
273 views
Why did the USSR give Crimea to Ukraine?
In 1954 Soviets transferred Crimea from Russian Soviet Republic to Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
Why is this strange?
The whole act, at least officially, was meant to be "a gift", a token of ...
3
votes
1answer
93 views
How easy one could start an artel in USSR after WW2 1945-1956?
During 1956-1960 all artels (cooperative enterprises) were nationalized in USSR. It was a large amount of artels.
How easy was it to organize an artel before that, in the post-war period of ...
4
votes
3answers
176 views
Did Ted Kennedy turn to the Soviet Union for help winning an election?
Reading an interesting article in Forbes, I was dumbfounded by the idea that Ted Kennedy might have sought out Yuri Andropov's help to run for president against Ronald Reagan in 1984. A relevant ...
3
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1answer
89 views
What are some major military successes achieved by the former Soviet Union against the Western World?
What are some major military successes achieved by the former Soviet Union against the Western World that shook the US and its cold war allies?
3
votes
1answer
203 views
Was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan one of the major reasons that led to the fall of Soviet Union?
Was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan one of the major reasons that led to the fall of Soviet Union?
That is what the world history teacher told me.
Please show your sources.
2
votes
3answers
117 views
Timing of Trotsky's Assassination
Stalin's arch rival Trotsky was exiled, but why did Stalin wait until later before sending assassins to finish him off?
6
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3answers
230 views
Why the difference of opinion about the disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose
A year back, Harvard professor Sugata Bose released a biography of the Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose which claimed to lay all speculation regarding his death to rest. However, last week, a veteran ...
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0answers
181 views
How did Finland treat Jewish locals during WWII?
First, what facts do I know.
There was no prosecution of Jews in Finland
Jewish POWs were separated in special POW camps for Jews. They were told that Finnish people hate them and they are to be ...
8
votes
3answers
276 views
What is the difference between NKVD and OGPU (USSR)
I've been looking at the history of the USSR and while the secret police were fairly straightforward under the Tsarist regime and the USSR under Lenin (Okhrana and the Cheka), for Stalin's rule of the ...
4
votes
1answer
73 views
Did Nikita Krushchev's support of Stalin's purges play a part in his removal from office?
As far as I can tell Krushchev was removed from office because of his erratic policies, and specifically their failures, but did his role in Stalin's purges also play a part in his removal?
4
votes
1answer
188 views
Why the USSR insisted on ban of the 1943 German film Munchhausen in Nuremberg?
After the war, many German films were shown in the USSR, popularly known as "trophy films", this included the 1944 "The Woman of My Dreams" which was shown until mid-1950s.
At the same time the ...
11
votes
2answers
675 views
Did Joseph Stalin kill anyone personally?
I read "Stalin: Triumph and tragedy" by Dmitri Volkogonov and (I believe) it said that Stalin didn't kill anyone with his own hands. He signed a lot of "death list", but those are just pieces of ...
5
votes
4answers
558 views
Why did Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Breznev wear military uniforms when Lenin and the later Soviet leaders did not?
I know that dictators wore uniforms to make their look intimidating. It is OK.
Why Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev wore military uniforms when Lenin and the later Soviet leaders ...
9
votes
2answers
274 views
Did Churchill and Roosevelt know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or the following secret pacts between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union?
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany prior to, and during WWII. It seems that the actions of the two countries after the invasion of Poland ...
8
votes
1answer
174 views
How Successful Were the International Brigades?
During the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) to what extent did the International Brigades play a role in fighting the fascists coup? My understanding is that they were a relatively minor element, ...
8
votes
4answers
258 views
Is there any evidence to support the claim that the US Strategic Defense Initiative played any significant role in undermining the USSR?
I have been reading Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, and one of the things that stuck me was a quote by Soviet hydrogen bomb creator Andrei Sakharov who was released from political imprisonment ...
12
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2answers
975 views
Were there any attempts to assassinate Joseph Stalin?
Were there any attempts to assassinate Stalin? I haven't learned of any attempt to kill him, was he so brutal that no one tried to kill him?
7
votes
1answer
103 views
What was the Soviet role in Syria during the Cold-War?
It is my understanding that the Soviet Union supported governments in Syria during the cold-war primarily as a counter-balance to American influence over regional powers particularly Saudi Arabia and ...
4
votes
3answers
268 views
Was Russo-Polish of 1919-1920 a war of independence?
What evidence is there to call the 1919-1920 conflict between Poland and the Soviet Union a "war of independence"? As for a definition of independence, I would say it is a full political, legal, and ...
12
votes
8answers
1k views
What was the ratio of German to Soviet losses on eastern front during different stages of the war?
I've read somewhere that the ratio of Soviet to German casualties on the eastern front was 1.4 for the whole war. But what about data for different stages of the war? (this ratio wasn't constant after ...
2
votes
2answers
501 views
Did Reagan really conspire to drop oil prices?
Wikipedia says that Ronald Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to rise oil production so to drop the prices and make pressure on the Soviet economy. I encountered such claim in many other sources as well.
...
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2answers
220 views
What was the maximum percent of the Soviet territory that was under Nazi control?
What was the percent of the Soviet territory that was under Nazi control at maximum extent?
10
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2answers
424 views
Did the U.S. and Soviet Union have a submarine battle in 1968?
There are books and articles about the Soviet submarine K-129 and the USS Scorpion in 1968, with various stories of attempted nuclear attacks and reprisals. Is there a factual narrative about these ...
