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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who governed the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become dictator by the 1930s. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies are known as Stalinism.
Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the black community.
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, also referred to by his initials PET, was a Canadian politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1968 to 1984, with a brief period instead as the leader of the Opposition in 1979 and 1980.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Best known for his wartime leadership as Prime Minister, Churchill was also a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Boer War hero, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), officially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact (WP), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 as per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954.
1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1991st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 991st year of the 2nd millennium, the 91st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1990s decade.
Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic.
The Gulf War was an armed campaign waged by a United States-led coalition of 35 nations against Iraq in response to the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait. It was codenamed Operation Desert Shield during the pre-combat buildup of troops and the defense of Saudi Arabia, and Operation Desert Storm during its combat phase.
Robert Pershing Wadlow, also known as the Alton Giant and the Giant of Illinois, was a man who was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. He was born and raised in Alton, Illinois, a small city near St. Louis, Missouri.
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from the Union's inception in 1922 until its breakup in 1991. In the anthem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the republic was referred to simply as Ukraine. The republic was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union through its republican branch, the Communist Party of Ukraine, as a union republic of the Soviet Union, which existed as a highly centralized one-party state. The first Bolshevik Ukrainian republic was founded in December 1917, as Ukrainian Soviet Republic, after the Bolshevik Revolution started in Russia. The Ukrainian civil war was fought among the different Ukrainian republics founded by Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian anarchists, and Ukrainian Bolsheviks, with the help or against neighboring states. The Ukrainian SSR was established by the Bolsheviks following the defeat of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the Soviet–Ukrainian War during the Russian Civil War. As a Soviet proto-state, the Ukrainian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations along with the Byelorussian SSR, even though they were legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. Upon the Soviet Union's dissolution, the Ukrainian SSR was transformed into the independent state of Ukraine, although the constitution remained in use until the adoption of the new constitution in June 1996.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies fought in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001, leading up to and resulting from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation in 1992. Its constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fueled the wars. Most of the wars ended through peace accords, involving full international recognition of new states, but with a massive human cost and economic damage to the region.
Vlad III, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1476/77. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania.
The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Coup, was a failed attempt made by communist hard-liners of the Soviet Union to take control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary of the party. The coup leaders consisted of top military and civilian officials who formed the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). They were hard-line opponents of Gorbachev's reform program, angry at the loss of control over Eastern European states, and fearful of the New Union Treaty that was about to be signed. The treaty decentralized much of the central government's power to the 15 republics. The hard-liners were very poorly organized. They met defeat by a short but effective campaign of anticommunist protestors, mainly in Moscow, led by Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who had been both an ally and critic of Gorbachev. The coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to office, while all the plotters lost office. Yeltsin became the dominant leader and Gorbachev lost much of his influence. The failed coup led to both the immediate collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the USSR four months later.
The Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations in Croatia by 1992. In Croatia, the war is primarily referred to as the "Homeland War" and also as the "Greater-Serbian Aggression". In Serbian sources, "War in Croatia" and (rarely) "War in Krajina" are used.
Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished for their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows. They became a leading band of the progressive rock genre, cited by some as the greatest progressive rock band of all time.
Ganesha, also known as Ganapati and Vinayaka, is one of the best-known and most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Bangladesh and in countries with large ethnic Indian populations including Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, and Trinidad and Tobago. Hindu denominations worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains and Buddhists.
The KGB 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, intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, previously known as the Russian Soviet Republic and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic as well as being unofficially known as Soviet Russia, the Russian Federation or simply Russia, was an independent federal socialist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous of the Soviet socialist republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian Republic was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Stalingrad, Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union (1988–1991) was the process of internal political, economic, and ethnic disintegration within the Soviet Union, which resulted in the end of its existence as a sovereign state. It was an unintended result of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system, in an attempt to end the "Era of Stagnation". In late 1991, the leaders of three of the Union's founding and largest republics declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed, and eight more republics joined them shortly thereafter. Gorbachev had to resign his office as president and what was left of the parliament to formally acknowledge the Union's collapse as a fait accompli.