Soviet Union - Cold War, Glasnost, Perestroika

Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Russian Revolution
- Late tsarist Russia
- The February Revolution
- Lenin and the Bolsheviks
- The Bolshevik coup
- The Bolshevik dictatorship
- Brest-Litovsk
- “War Communism”
- The Civil War and the creation of the U.S.S.R.
- The Communist International
- Culture and religion under communism
- Foreign policy
- The communist regime in crisis: 1920–21
- Lenin’s disillusionment
- The struggle for succession
The U.S.S.R. from the death of Lenin to the death of Stalin
- The NEP and the defeat of the Left
- Toward the “second Revolution”: 1927–30
- The Party versus the peasants
- Industrialization, 1929–34
- Internal, 1930–37
- Foreign policy, 1928–40
- Into the war: 1940–45
- Postwar
The U.S.S.R. from 1953 to 1991
- The Khrushchev era
  - The transition
  - The 20th Party Congress and after
  - Nationality policy
  - The cultural Thaw
  - Economic problems
  - Khrushchev’s fall
- The Brezhnev era
  - Collective leadership
  - Economic policy
  - Cultural retrenchment
  - Nationality policy
  - Foreign policy
- The Interregnum: Andropov and Chernenko
- The Gorbachev era
  - Gorbachev’s succession
  - Economic and social reforms
  - Political restructuring
  - Economic policy
  - Foreign policy
  - The attempted coup

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Khrushchev had a vision for the Soviet Union: a land of plenty where democracy, guided by the party, reigned. He was prevented from being very radical in most policy areas by the conservative majority on the party Presidium. He took an incalculable risk: in his “Secret Speech,” delivered to a closed session at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, Khrushchev demolished Stalin’s legacy, criticizing his way of running the country after 1934. (Khrushchev did not want to bring into question the centrally planned economy based on rapid industrialization and collectivization.) The revelation of Stalin’s crimes shocked the delegates and ...(100 of 33818 words)

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