Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a communist revolutionary and Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, Stalin consolidated power to become the Soviet Union's undisputed dictator by the 1930s. Henceforth, he formalised his Leninist interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he established became known as Stalinism.
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 during the era of the Second World War, and again from 1953 to 1956.
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates.
The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society. The title was awarded both to civilian and military persons.
An index of articles related to the former nation known as the Soviet Union. It covers the Soviet revolutionary period until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This list includes topics, events, persons and other items of national significance within the Soviet Union. It does not include places within the Soviet Union, unless the place is associated with an event of national significance. This index also does not contain items related to Soviet Military History.
Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? is a military history book by the Russian non-fiction author Viktor Suvorov, published in 1989. Suvorov argued that Joseph Stalin planned a conquest of Europe for many years, and was preparing to launch a surprise attack on Nazi Germany at the end of summer of 1941 to begin that plan. He says that Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike by Adolf Hitler, a claim which the Nazi leader himself had made at the time. Since the 1990s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this theory has received some support among historians in some post-Soviet and Central European states, but some Western scholars have criticized his conclusions for lack of evidence and documentation.
German–Soviet Union relations date to the aftermath of the First World War. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by Germany ended hostilities between Russia and Germany; it was signed on March 3, 1918. A few months later, the German ambassador to Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach, was shot dead by Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in an attempt to incite a new war between Russia and Germany. The entire Soviet embassy under Adolph Joffe was deported from Germany on November 6, 1918, for their active support of the German Revolution. Karl Radek also illegally supported communist subversive activities in Weimar Germany in 1919.
Georgy (Yury) Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Ukrainian revolutionary and Bolshevik leader, and a key Soviet politician during and after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Pyatakov was considered by contemporaries to be one of the early communist state's best economic administrators, but with poor political judgement.
The following lists events that happened during 1941 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Arkady Pavlovich Rosengolts was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet military leader, politician and diplomat. He was the People's Commissar of Foreign Trade and a defendant at the Moscow Trial of the Twenty-One in 1938.
The following lists events that happened during 1933 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1936 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Medal "For Strengthening Military Cooperation" was a military award of the Soviet Union established on May 25, 1979, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Its statute was later confirmed and slightly amended by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet No. 2523-X of July 18, 1980. It was bestowed to recognise outstanding cooperation between the different services and the different armed forces of the various Warsaw Pact countries or of any other friendly socialist state.
The following lists events that happened during 1937 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1938 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1939 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1949 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1923 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1931 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke, at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. On the day of the funeral, of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens visiting the capital to pay their respects, at least 109 were later acknowledged to have died in a human crush.
