Union of Soviet Socialist Republics summary
Learn about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its final dissolution in 1991
Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Soviet Union.
Great Purge Summary
Great Purge, three widely publicized show trials and a series of closed, unpublicized trials held in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, in which many prominent Old Bolsheviks were found guilty of treason and executed or imprisoned. All the evidence presented in court was derived from
Katyn Massacre Summary
Katyn Massacre, mass execution of Polish military officers by the Soviet Union during World War II. The discovery of the massacre precipitated the severance of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London. After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union 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
Kyrgyzstan Summary
Kyrgyzstan, country of Central Asia. It is bounded by Kazakhstan on the northwest and north, by China on the east and south, and by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the south and west. Most of Kyrgyzstan’s borders run along mountain crests. The capital is Bishkek (known from 1862 to 1926 as Pishpek and