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The following lists events that happened during 1963 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics .
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The following lists events that happened during 1963 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics .
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. Flown by American pilot Francis Gary Powers, the aircraft had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan, and crashed near Sverdlovsk, after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground and was captured.
The Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster, known in Russia as the Catastrophe at Baikonur Cosmodrome, was a launch pad accident that occurred on 24 October 1960 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan. As a prototype of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile was being prepared for a test flight, an explosion occurred when the second stage engine ignited accidentally, killing an unknown number of military and technical personnel working on the preparations. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, information was suppressed for many years and the Soviet government did not acknowledge the event until 1989. With more than 54 casualties, it is the deadliest disaster in space exploration history. The catastrophe is named for the Chief Marshal of Artillery Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, who was the head of the R-16 development program and perished in the explosion.
The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges through interpreters between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Khrushchev, at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959.
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, codenamed Hero and Yoga was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, including the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war.
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was a Soviet intelligence officer who served as Chairman of the KGB from March 1954 to December 1958 and Director of the GRU from December 1958 to February 1963. Serov was NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR from 1939 to 1941 and Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria from 1941 to 1954.
Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin is a Russian nationalist politician serving as the senator from the Russian-occupied Zaporozhye Oblast since 23 September 2023. He previously served as director general of Roscosmos from 2018 to July 2022, as deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry from 2011 to 2018, and as Russia's ambassador to NATO from 2008 to 2011.
George Kisevalter was an American operations officer of the CIA, who handled Major Pyotr Popov, the first Soviet GRU officer run by the CIA. He had some involvement with Soviet intelligence Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, active in the 1960s, who had more direct relations with British MI-6.
Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was a putative KGB officer who ostensibly defected to the United States in 1964. Controversy arose as to whether or not he was a KGB "plant," and he was held in detention by the CIA for over three years. Eventually, he was deemed a true defector. After his release he became an American citizen and worked as a consultant and lecturer for the CIA.
The Russian census identified that there were more than 5,864,000 Ukrainians living in Russia in 2015, representing over 4.01% of the total population of the Russian Federation and comprising the eighth-largest ethnic group. On 2022 February there were roughly 2.8 million Ukrainians who fled to Russia.
There is a long history of close cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom intelligence services; see Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for World War II and subsequent relationships. There are permanent liaison officers of each country in major intelligence agencies of the other, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Secret Intelligence Service ("MI6"), FBI and the Security Service (MI5), and National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). From 1943 to 2017, the Open Source Enterprise, a division of the CIA, was run out of Caversham Park in Reading, Berkshire. American officials worked closely with their British counterparts to monitor foreign TV and radio broadcasts, as well as online information.
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
The Committee for State Security was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 13 March 1954 until 3 December 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, it was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.
Demyan (Demian) Serhiyovych Korotchenko was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who twice served as the head of government of the Ukrainian SSR.
The following lists events that happened during 1943 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The following lists events that happened during 1959 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Karaganda was a merchant steam ship of the Black Sea Shipping Company from 9 March 1950 to 1967. This ship was built in the US in 1919, named Circinus and used in some shipping companies of the United States and from 1942 in Soviet shipping companies.
The Courier is a 2020 historical spy film directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tom O'Connor. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, and is based on the true story of a British businessman who was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service to be a message conduit with Russian spy source Oleg Penkovsky in the 1960s. Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley, and Angus Wright also star.
Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin was a Soviet Army General and head of the state and military security organs, who was deputy chairman of the KGB (1954-1963), temporary acting head of the KGB in 1961 and the longest running head of the GRU.
Gervase Cowell was half of a British husband-and-wife intelligence team who handled Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a Soviet GRU military intelligence officer who provided the West with invaluable military secrets.
The following lists events that happened during 1964 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.