Leonid Brezhnev summary

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the major political party of Russia and the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of October 1917 to 1991. (Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union arose from the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social

Afghan War, in the history of Afghanistan, the internal conflict that began in 1978 between anticommunist Islamic guerrillas and the Afghan communist government (aided in 1979–89 by Soviet troops), leading to the overthrow of the government in 1992. More broadly, the term also encompasses military

Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of

Government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not