-
1986 BCE
Chernobyl
was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 26 April 1986 in the No.4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plantnear Pripyat, in what was then part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). -
1956 BCE
Brezhnev Era : The Virgin Lands and corn programmes
These agricultural policies were intended to help produce more meat. The government encouraged people to grow maize for feed in the hope of increasing yields of livestock, but they didn´t want to lower the amount of other products grown. This was developed to increase arable land so that this would not happen. The Soviet Union lacked sufficent food for people in the cities. In the end, the USSR had to important grain, causing economic problems for those who succeeded Khrushchev. -
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov
He was a Soviet politician who was ambassador to Hungary from 1954 to 1957, during which time he was involved in the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, and then Chairman of the KGB from 1967 until 1982. Later in 1982, he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a position he held until his death fifteen months later. He tried to remove Brezhnev´s followers and replace them with a new group of nomenklatura. He made changes in Brezhnev´s camp. -
Nikita Krushchev
He was a politician who led theSoviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Unionfrom 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. -
Revolution and Dissent
the USSR supported the MPLA (angola) and helped Ethiopia to overthrow the regime of Haile Selassre. In both cases a communist party was created. -
Dissent
Stalin’s goverment was over so freedom of speech was getting stonger: itellectuals started to critizise the goverment and many articles and notes were published. Samisdat:self published pamphlets that were illigally distributed.Tamizdat: similar to Samizdat but published abroad and smuggled back to the USSR -
Brezchnev Era
the CPSU leadership censured him ( Krushchev) and he was removed from the power. The official explaination was that he retired due to poor health and advanced age. Then, he was openly accused of trying to revive the cult of personality and was criticized fot his economic and foreign policies. He lived for the rest of his life in relative peace in the Crimean peninsula, writing his memoirs; these were published posthumously by his soon in 1971. -
Economic Stagnation
the “collectivization” was taken into action. Collectivization was when landholders gave up their land ownership to combine all their plots with other landholders to create bigger farms. This was affected when Brezhev imported a large quantiy of agricultural products because of a poor harvest -
Leonid Brezhnev
He was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that ofJoseph Stalin in duration. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, His tenure as leader was marked by the beginning ofan era of economic and social stagnation in the Soviet Union. -
The Brezhnev doctrine
the invasion of Czechoslovakia and reversed all the reforms took into action in the country. -
Afghanistan
there was a war in 1979 between socialism and revolucionaries (Mujahideen) . Socialism was supported by the USSR and the other group by the USA and Islamic groups. The USSR won the conflict but they signed an agreement to leave the territory in 1989 -
Nur Muhammad Taraki
He was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Taraki was born near Kabul and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist. He later became one of the founding members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and was elected as the party's general secretary at its first congress. -
Period: to
Perestroika
was a political movement for reformation within theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s until 1991 widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is “restructuring”, referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system. -
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko
He was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later (March, 1985). Domestic and foreign problems remained the same, the gerontocracy spent its last days in charge of the USSR. An increasingly frail Chenenko relied on his deputy, Gorbachev, to chair meetings and make his ideas known. -
Gorbachev
He was the eighth leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991 (titled as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, and as President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991). -
Glasnost
Was a policy taken up with perestroika (from 1985 to 1991.)Its aim was to free the political sistem and to give the press more freedom to critize the goverment if it is wanted. -
Demokratiztsiya
was a slogan introduced byGeneral Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government -
Détente
the USSR and the USA(Nixton) signed an agreement called SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) to limit each other with the armament creation . Also this had repercussion because aparently the USSR wanted to avoid a nuclear war and also wanted peace with the USA.
