Questions tagged [soviet-union]
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 two superpowers, opposing the USA in the Cold War. 1980s leader Gorbachev attempted reform with perestroika and glasnost but the country collapsed in 1991.
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Was Lassalism persecuted in the USSR during the Stalin period?
Background
Ferdinand Lassalle was the founder of the General German Workers Association (ADAV), which is considered as the first organized labor movement (at least in Germany) and would later evolve ...
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What's the proxy war that the USSR spent most resources on?
Off the top of my head it might be Afghanistan, but I'm not totally sure despite direct troop participation. They also sent substantial aid to Vietnam, North Korea, and various Arab countries fighting ...
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What led to the abandonment of the word "canton" for RSFSR subdivisions?
The RSFSR had "cantons" as subdivisions of some of its constituent Republics in the 1920s. What led to the abandonment of this term, later on? (I'm guessing the word (which is probably a ...
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Are there other examples of sustainable propaganda besides USSR: several generations, several leaders
From my understanding of the history of USSR, it was successful enough to dominate in the ideology about events of 1910s-1920s on its territory. In particular, the official party doctrine, the books, ...
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Where can I find statistics on Soviet education of foreign students and in foreign countries?
I'm looking for statistics on soviet education of the foreign students and in foreign countries. In particular, I am trying to find numbers on:
How many foreigners were educated in Soviet Union (e.g. ...
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Did Soviet propaganda assert that the Jews lived badly/poorly in Israel?
To my knowledge, there was a lot of anti-Israel propaganda that emphasized
Israeli militarism.
Suppression of the Arab locals.
Israel being a puppet of the US.
Israel being friendly with the former ...
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Why would this word have been an unsuitable name in Communist Poland? Is it because it's a racial slur?
In Marek Hłasko's The Graveyard (set in communist-occupied Poland) there is a scene where, in a political party meeting one of the party members (Nowak) is forced to change the name of his dog. This ...
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Is "Lenin’s Testament" authentic?
Context
In 1922, the Communist Party was firmly in control of the USSR (or at least the Russia part of it), and Vladimir Lenin was the undisputed leader of the Party. Lenin was seriously ill and had ...
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Why did Women's Day never really catch on in the US, even though it started there?
The roots of International Women's Day (March 8th) go all the way back to New York City in 1909 and the Socialist Party of America. However, from what I have learned the International Women's Day is ...
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What are the grenades and artillery cited in this testimony?
In the testimony of a Soviet officer of the raid on Tatsinskaya cited by Wikipedia, the Soviet officer speaks of two elements faced by Soviet tanks:
Enemy artillery
Germans "launching grenades [...
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Why was the Budjak annexed to Ukraine in 1940?
In 1940, the USSR pressured Romania to surrender its eastern-most province of Bessarabia. The majority of it was given to the newly formed Moldavian SSR, but the Budjak was made part of Ukraine ...
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Are there some concrete examples of the pre-1962 Soviet complaints in re CORONA spy satellites?
According to Pat Norris' book Spies in the Sky (p. 111)
until the first successful Zenit flight in summer 1962 the Soviets complained bitterly to America about the CORONA flights.
However he does ...
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Why did the Soviets not shoot down US spy satellites during the Cold War?
The USSR was not happy with unauthorised overflights, shooting down everything it could, from spy balloons to U-2s. Also, despite repeated US proposals, something like the Open Skies treaty was only ...
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When was the official cover of Project Genetrix abandoned? Did the Soviets show (or threaten to show) any of the balloons' equipment?
I've read the Wikipedia page on Project_Genetrix (and one of its sources) but one aspect that's not clear to me is when the official cover the project was abandoned. According to the declassified ...
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What was the true extent of German losses at Prokhorovka?
Recently I came accross what seemed to be a new thesis about the battle of Prokhorovka. I read the book Kursk of the German author and historian Roman Töppel, who explains alongside other "new ...
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Why did the Red Army change uniforms in 1943?
In 1943, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Rabóče-krestʹjánskaja Krásnaja ármija, RKKA) of the Soviet Union decided to adopt shoulder boards instead of collar tabs for rank identification. This is ...
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Why did Pakistan get involved in Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989?
Soviet-Afghan War
Afghan-Pakistan Relations >> Contemporary Era
I was reading this Wikipedia article and couldn't understand why Pakistan got itself involved in Soviet-Afghan War from 1979 to ...
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What are the reasons for the failure of Soviet Union at agriculture? [closed]
The failure at agriculture is known to everybody. The Soviet Union became one of the main importer of grain whereas till sixties was one the main exporters. Does anyone know more on this or can ...
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Were there any recorded accidents in the USSR (after 1945) involving gas pipelines?
Are there any recorded accidents in the USSR (after 1945) involving gas pipelines? Was there any suspicion that some of them might have been an act of sabotage?
I am not asking about a particular gas ...
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How did the Soviet press talk about the opposing forces (mujahideens) during the Soviet-Afghan war?
I've watched and read a fair bit of material on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, but this [in my humble experience] is a topic that's not touched upon much if at all in Western coverage of that war. For ...
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Which Soviet resolution rejected "laughter for laughter's sake"?
George Counts (1949):
During the past two and one-half years the Central Committee has issued a series of "ideological resolutions" ... These resolutions not only reject "art for art's ...
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Where can I read the 1966 letters opposing Stalin's rehabilitation?
On 14 February 1966, 25 notable Soviet scientists and cultural figures sent a letter to CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev urging against the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin. Another similar ...
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What is the origin of the claim of the 27 million Soviets dead in WWII? [closed]
All throughout the existence of the USSR, there was always the claim that the number of USSR citizens who died in WWII was 20 million.
Lately, I am seeing a persistent claim that that number was 27 ...
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Were the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan officially volunteers?
I always thought they were conscripts, who were ordered to go there, but recently saw a mention that they all were volunteers. So, I wonder whether they signed any paper of consent before being sent ...
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What heavy industrial work, if any, was done in USSR 1923-1927?
In the USSR, the first five-year Plan began in 1928. The Revolution and Civil War ended in 1922 Oct (the "main phase" according to wikipedia). That's, coincidentally, a five-year gap.
So I ...
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What was the extent of Kohl's government opposition to the independence of Ukraine?
There's a (paywalled) piece in Der Spiegel summarized as
In 1991, the Helmut Kohl government wanted to prevent the eastward expansion of NATO and the independence of Ukraine - this is shown by ...
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Could the leader of the Soviet Union have been removed legally?
The list of Soviet Union's leaders shows that usually leaders remained in office until their death, I'd like to know:
What was the legal status of the Soviet Union's leader? How was he elected or ...
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Were there written (draft) Soviet proposals that would have effectively restricted the US navy from (parts of) Europe?
I'm pretty sure that if one trawls the Soviet propaganda, one can find something asking Americans to bugger off from Europe altogether (ok, on a more serious note--Gorbatchev did propose the ...
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Why was Stalin OK with the UN's headquaters being placed in the US?
It feels like Stalin should have objected to this because this gives the US some extra influence. Why not insist on placing the headquaters somewhere more neutral?
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Did (other) PRC or Soviet leaders give 3+ hour congress speeches?
Fidel Castro is well-known for giving 4- or even 7-hour speeches. Xi Jinping gave a 3h 20min communist party congress speech. How does the latter compare to typical PRC or Soviet leaders speeches at ...
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How did the accounting and capital organization system work in communist countries like the USSR? Did ideology justify or undermine the system? [closed]
It's difficult to see how the leaders could have kept track of such a complex system, in such a big country as the Soviet Union (USSR), without recognizing the existence of capital relations, the ...
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Was there a Cold War era Russian safe haven city for politicians and scientists?
I remember learning about a Russian city where, during the Cold War, top politicians and scientists and their families would be evacuated to. It would have existed as a normal city outside of Cold War ...
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Communist Party member Stances on Molotov Ribbentrop Soviety German Treaty [closed]
I am reading "Toward Freedom, The Case against Race Reductionism" by Toure Reed. In his section about Black Progressives, he writes about how the influence of the Communist Party on the NNC ...
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Did the Soviet Union protest against Italy building or acquiring submarines after WW2?
Article 59 of the 1947 Paris peace treaty prohibited Italy from having submarines or aircraft carriers. As far as I can tell, Italy acquired some US-made WW2-era submarines (Gato, Balao, and Tench ...
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What is the origin of the idea of "people's republics"?
How did the idea of the "Soviet Union" (a union of councils) mutated/evolved into a “people's republic” (a certain ethnofederalism) with the ethnicities as the main building blocks?
For ...
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Were deportations committed by Stalin during WWII covered in Allies' press? [closed]
Was the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush populations (carried out in 1944) covered in the media of the Allied powers?
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How, exactly, was 30% of Russia's industrial capacity distributed "in and around Moscow" in 1941?
Numerous source allege that the Germans would have crippled the Russian war effort if they had captured "Moscow" because 30% of Russia's industrial capacity was in that area.
Given this, ...
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Was Russia or the USSR ever involved in a large military embarrassment alongside or against Vietnam?
I was listening to a Russian politician's (2021, pre-war) declaration of what would happen with the current war in Ukraine, and I was caught offguard by him mentioning a Russian military-related ...
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Why Finland received so little foreign support during the winter war?
Considering the following four facts:
Many western countries helped the anti-communist government during the Russian civil war,
League of Nation supports Finland,
The war lasts really long comparing ...
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What was the ethnic composition of Soviet government?
One often describes USSR in ethnic terms, as Russian domination over other nations (many of which later became independent states). While the USSR certainly practiced ethnic policies (such as ...
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How important were social justice issues in dissident circles in the late USSR?
In the western narrative Soviet dissidents are portrayed as pro-democracy and even pro-market. However literature from the time hints that inequality between the Nomenclatura and the poorer elements ...
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How to get per 1000 deaths numbers for the 1932-34 Holodomor in Ukraine for the rural areas only, against the less starving town population?
As to wikipedia, Holodomor is about:
Country: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
Location: Central and eastern Ukraine
Period: 1932–1933
Total deaths: Around 3.5 million
And
Source: ...
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Where can I find an English translation of the text of the Belovezh Accords?
It is reported in many places on the internet that the decision to abolish the Soviet Union was made in the Belovezh Forest in Belarus, near Poland, by the heads of government of three of the Soviet ...
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What was the Soviet reaction to the revelations about secret US programs like Projects ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MOCKINGBIRD, etc., revealed in the 1970s?
I imagine the perception among the party elites in Moscow would have been that all these programs, projects, experiments and so on were initiated with them in mind, and would have inevitably been ...
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Why was the Red Army successful against the Japanese in 1939 but perform poorly against Finland 1939-40 and early part of WW2?
The Soviet Union's Red Army had great difficulty overcoming the vastly outnumbered Finns in the 1939-40 Winter War, and suffered disastrous defeats in the early stages of the German invasion in World ...
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What percentage of people were acquitted in "Stalin's trials"
What proportion of those accused under Article 58 and other political articles were acquitted in 1930-1953 in the USSR?
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Did the Soviet Union or China participate in the light bulb cartel? If not, in what ways did they differ and how long did their bulbs last?
The Phoebus cartel was a well known scheme to fix the standard lifespan of incandescent lightbulbs that arose at the beginning of the 20th century.
See Spectrum.ieee.org.
Although not implemented for ...
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Why was Axis intelligence so poor in relation to Operation Uranus?
Given that the Axis knew the USSR would attack (at some point) in the Caucasus, that the bulk of the USSR's Caucasus forces not committed to Stalingrad had escaped the Fall Blau offensives, and that ...
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Did Stalin offer Hitler peace after Stalingrad?
While reading Winston's War (Max Hastings), I have been repeatedly impressed by the image of Hitler fighting against the Soviet Union, while the latter was supplied by the Allies. A collectivist ...
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Did Germany offer the Soviet Union an opportunity to join the Axis?
This article on Wikipedia claims that Germany and the Soviet Union conducted talks over the possibility for the Soviet Union to join the Axis.
talks occurred in October and November 1940 concerning ...
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