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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Did the Soviet Union quarantine shipment of Jupiter and Thor missiles to Italy and Turkey?
If not a quarantine, did Soviet Union publicly condemn the placement by Eisenhower before the Bay of Pigs Invasion or before the Cuban Missile Crisis?
If there was no quarantine, was it because ...
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What usually happens to a country's leadership when a dictator dies? [closed]
I don't know how succession happened in Soviet Russia, but I remember a succession of leaders, and they all appeared to be by election — although those elections may have been rigged. Were they?
My ...
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What do the writings of the NKVD general Lyushkov after his defection to Japan contain?
I was recently looking at a paper about Lyushkov, an NKVD general who defected to Japan after he was recalled to Moscow where he would have been likely arrested and eventually shot.
Several Japanese ...
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How did the Soviet victory at Nomonhan influence German thinking and planning?
In 1939, Japan and the Soviet Union fought an undeclared border war in Manchuria, which culminated with the Japanese defeat at Nomonhan in late August.
... the Red Army in a few days enveloped and ...
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Why did Stalin bother with signed confessions?
Why did Stalin bother having signed confessions beaten out of anyone? I'm reading Simon Montefiore's book Stalin and am curious about the length he went to to get a real signature on faked documents.
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Where can I find the Soviet Red Star Newspaper where Col. Galkin published about Japanese biological warfare?
In the book Unit 731: Testimony, Hal Gold states on Page 88
In July 1948, the Soviet army newspaper Red Star carried an article by a Col. Galkin, special correspondent on the newspaper for Japanese ...
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Were any members clergy (priests, rabbis, or imams) in the USSR members of Communist party or KGB operatives?
Inspired by question Were there in the USSR monasteries decorated with Soviet orders?. Although religion was contrary to the dominant Marxist ideology (but see Christian Communism), it was tolerated ...
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Was there communist opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
I was told to come here from Politics SE so this is a repost.
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government. This obviously led to much ...
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Did the Soviets learn about the SS tattoos only in late 1945 (and why so late)?
Antony Beevor, in the context of late April 1945 / early May 1945 in Berlin:
The French NCO claimed that they were forced labourers who had been press-ganged into uniform by the Germans when the Red ...
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Did Arab nations send prisoners to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war?
The documentary "The Power of Nightmares (2004)" by Adam Curtis claims that various Arab nations like Egypt emptied prisons and sent prisoners to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Is ...
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How important were Soviet raw material supplies for Nazi Germany in the first two years of WW2?
During the first nearly two years of WW2 (from September 1939 to June 1941), the Soviet Union was among the largest suppliers of raw materials (oil, rubber, grain, iron ore, etc.) for Nazi Germany.
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Are there statistics on Soviet Jews, Germans and other groups dissimulating their ethnic origins?
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence regarding Jews and Germans (and possibly other stigmatized ethnic groups) in the USSR trying to dissimulate their ethnic origins: e.g., children issued from mixed ...
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Why couldn't honey be sent up to Mir?
This article claims that after the collapse of the USSR, Russia was in such dire financial straits that not only could Roskosmos not afford to relieve the acting flight engineer Sergei Krikalev, but ...
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Why were there so many 'carrier killer' Kh-22 anti-ship missiles in Ukraine in the 1990s?
Ukraine is said to have scrapped 423 Kh-22 large anti-ship ('carrier killer') cruise missiles in the 1990s, together with some 60 strategic bombers that could carry & launch these. (This was due ...
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When was Joseph Alsop article 'Another Hitler-Time?' published in the Washington Post?
When was Joseph Alsop article 'Another Hitler-Time?' first published in the Washington Post? The Washington Post archives doesn't seem to contain this article.
This article contains, the supposed, ...
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Did Gosplan use Sears Roebuck and similar catalogues to "fix prices"?
Does anything corroborate the claim, made by Ray Evans in the March 2002 proceedings of the H.R. Nicholls Society (dedicated to deregulating the Australian labour market), that when the American ...
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Ranking Eastern Europe Communist regimes by severity of repression [closed]
I was wondering that the severity of repression, censorship, economic stagnation must have varied greatly across the Eastern bloc countries between 1945-1990. It may even have varied over the years in ...
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When in 1980s did travel to and from USSR became possible?
Soviet borders were closed for traveling from USSR for most Soviet people until late 1980s. I don't recall, however, the year/month when the borders opened. After 1986 and before 1991, but that's all ...
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Is there an example of a Soviet or Russian prison camp where both guards and prisoners perished?
NOTE:
As to previous research, I simply did a google search, "soviet prison camp where both guards and prisoners perished" and I got nothing besides general information about deaths in camps....
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Did Soviet people decorate their own homes with outdoor Christmas lights?
As far back as the 1960s, it has been common in North America for people to decorate their homes with strands of outdoor lights during the winter holiday season. In the neighbourhood where I live, at ...
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In the Soviet Union, what was the average cookware available in the home?
What was the average cookware available in someone's home (apartment) in the Soviet Union? The period I'm most interested in is the post-war up to the Brezhnev Stagnation, so this is roughly 1945 - ...
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Did the US stop using the U-2 spy plane for USSR after the shoot-down event in 1960?
The shoot-down of Powers is a famous event in the history of modern military.
Did US stop using U-2 afterwards on USSR?
It is known that this event stimulated the US spy satellite program.
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Were there any female soldiers in the Soviet army who partook in the mass rapes in Eastern Germany?
Were there female Soviet soldiers that partook in the mass rapes in Eastern Germany?
The only source I found on any reaction of female soldiers on the mass rapes was in a testimony of a veteran:
...
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Is Wikipedia's identification of Lebed an error?
Speaking of the Alexander Yakovlev's conflict with the hardcore communists, the Wikipedia article says:
In the early 1980s, Yakovlev returned to the Soviet Union, and became a prominent supporter of ...
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(Why) did the PRC not [ever] recognize the incorporation of the Baltic states into the USSR?
I'm aware that the relationship between the PRC and the USSR was rocky at times, but it seems a little odd the PRC never recognized the three Baltic states as part of the USSR, that is according to ...
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Did Comecon [even] fail to standardize container sizes?
This is from a 1983 NYT article:
Other obstacles to the bloc's growth include a wider railway gauge in the Soviet Union than that in most other countries of Eastern Europe, the absence of modern ...
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Did Stalin describe Beria as his Himmler?
The Wikipedia article on Lavrentiy Beria states:
At the Yalta Conference, Stalin introduced Beria to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt as “my Himmler”.
However, the only reference given there is an ...
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How were Soviet-Afghanistan War casualties distributed between the Soviet Republics? Were they disproportionately non-Russian?
It's frequently asserted that the impact of the Soviet-Afghanistan War disproportionately fell on Soviet Republics outside Russia, as non-Russians were overrepresented in the Red Army. The resultant ...
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Did Western governments object to repression of western communists during Stalinism? [closed]
I am interested in the repression of western communists (traveling to or residing in the USSR) during the Stalin era. How extensive was it? What were the justifications from the Soviet point of view? ...
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Did the USSR attempt to broker peace negotiations between Japan and USA?
I ran across a remark in the German Wikipedia, in the article about the Tokyo War tribunals. They discuss the points 35 and 36 of the charges (waging war against the USSR) :
Von besonderem Interesse ...
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To what extent did Russian bourgeoisie and capitalism continued to exist through the Soviet rule in the USSR? [closed]
During the Communist rule in Russia, the industry and land were mostly nationalized, and many of the previous landowners or industrialist were either exiled or physically exterminated. However, the ...
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Why did the Patrice Lumumba University eject Carlos the Jackal?
According to Michael Ray,
Carlos the Jackal, byname of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, (born October 12, 1949, Caracas, Venezuela), Venezuelan militant who orchestrated some of the highest-profile terrorist ...
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How much did the production of the Tsar Bomba cost to the Soviets?
The Tsar Bomba, also known as the "King of Bombs," was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed and tested by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, this ...
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Was the KGB, at least after 1975, actually an effective institution? [closed]
There were several major events that the KGB either failed to predict or misjudged, e.g., it
underestimated the Solidarity movement in Poland
failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall
did not ...
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When did McFaul & Sechin first meet?
According to David Remnick,
In 1991, McFaul was in St. Petersburg, trying to organize a seminar on local government. He found himself doing business with a man from the mayor’s office named Igor ...
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Who said, "Freedom to do what?"
I read a quote recently, it was either Lenin or Stalin, one of their aides said, "Now, comrade, we will have freedom!" and Lenin (or Stalin) replied, "Freedom to do what?" The ...
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Identification of Stalingrad memorabilia medallions
Some time in the 1970s, an academic from Riga, Latvia, visited my grandfather (a physicist) in the UK and gave these Stalingrad "medals" (for want of a better word) to his sons. 50 years on, ...
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How did US, and the Western world's people react when USSR suddenly became an ally during WWII?
Before the USSR's participation in WWII with the West, it had a non-aggression pact with Germany, invaded Poland, and is basically the super-villain of the Red Scare. But suddenly, after USSR became ...
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Did Nazi propaganda about the USSR change after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
I'm well-aware that Soviet propaganda completely changed its orientation after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, starting a much more positive portrayal of the Nazis in many aspects up until the German ...
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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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