| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Joseph Stalin | 1927-53; Very suppressive leader of the USSR |
| Stalinism | Stalin's view of Marxism: [basically] "I am the most powerful person." |
| Stalin abandons NEP | 1928 (creators of NEP are purged) |
| Collectivization | Taking land from kulaks |
| Kulaks | Middle-class farmers who earned profit |
| Gosplan | Writters of the Five Year Plans |
| First Five Year Plan | 1929-33; very successful for USSR, terrible conditions for people |
| Second Five Year Plan | 1933-37: even more successful and suppressive as first |
| Heavy vs. light industry | Metal/Ship parts/etc. vs. clothes/food/etc. |
| Great Purge | 1936-39; used gulags; about 35 million people killed |
| Gulags | Work/Death camps in Siberia |
| World War 2 | 1939-45; US+B+F+USSR vs. G+I+J; USSR wins |
| Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact | 1939; delayed Soviets from entering the war |
| German Invasion | Hitler invades USSR in 1941 |
| Satellites | Countries the USSR has taken control of |
| Eastern Bloc | the whole USSR including satellites |
| Stalin's death | 1953; people's relief afterward |
| Georgi Malenkov | 1953-56; Soviet leader; slows down industrialization |
| Nikita Krushchev | 1956-64; leader who gave back limited freedoms |
| deStalinization | The process in which Stalin's policies are abolished; led by Khrushchev |
| Virgin Lands Program | allowed more food to be grown |
| Hungarian revolt | 1956; Hungary vs. Soviet Union; bloody battle |
| Czechoslovakian revolt | 1968; Czech. vs. Soviet Union; bloody battle |
| Korean War | 1950-53; Civil war; USSR+NK vs. US+SK; part of containment-successful |
| Vietnam War | 1963-73; Civil war; USSR+NV vs. US+SV; part of containment-unsuccessful |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | 1961-62; US finds Soviet missiles in Cuba; missiles removed; closest ever to nuclear war |
| Détente | 1972-80; wanted better approach to foreign relations; SALT |
| SALT | Strategic Arms Limitations Talks |
| Afghanistan invasion | USSR invades Afghanistan; USSR wants buffer and expansion of communism; US unhappy |
| Iran Hostage Crisis | 1980; US Embassy held hostage |
| Polish revolt | 1981 Poland revolts but not invaded by USSR |
| Star Wars | Reagan's plan-FAIL |
| Leonid Brezhnev | 1964-82; somewhat suppressive; militant; gulags reopened |
| Yuri Andropov | 1982-84; leader of USSR |
| Konstantin Chernenko | 1984-85; leader of USSR |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | 1985-91; last leader of USSR; somewhat democratic |
| Glasnost | "openness;" less censorship-successful |
| Perestroika | "restructuring;" more private business-unsuccessful |
| Demokratizatsia | "democracy;" multiparty elections w/ privacy |
| Cold War | 1945ish-1991; period of terror betwen US and USSR |
| Greek Civil War | 1947; US supports democratic gov't; USSR supports communist people |
| Containment | Stop the other countries from becoming communist |
| Marshall Plan | US gave aid to any country if they promised not to be communist |
| COMECON | USSR gave aid to any country for being communist |
| NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization 1949 |
| Warsaw Pact | 1955; formalizes alliance of Eastern Europe |
| Division of Germany and Berlin | 1948; WG+WB for West and EG+EB for East |
| Atomic Weapons | US: 1945/51 USSR: 1949/53 |
| Berlin Wall | The wall that divides WB and EB; knocked down in 1991 |
| Berlin Airlift | 1948-49; USSR blocks access to Berlin so US uses airplanes |
| Space Race | The race for outer space accomplishments: Sputnik/Gagarin/Apollo II/etc. |
| Gorbachev's reforms | Glasnost, perestroika, demokratizatsia; freedom in Eastern Bloc |
| Hardliners | Traditional communists who saw Gorbachev as giving away the govt's power |
| Reformers | Everyone else who liked the reforms, but thought they weren't enough |
| Commonwealth of Independent States | 12 of 15 states of the USSR; alliance with common economics/foreign relations/law/etc. |
| Baltic States | Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Did not join CIS |
| Boris Yeltsin | 1991-1999; very corrupt; elected president; promotes capitalist economy |
| Coup | 1993; soldiers loyal to Yeltsin; most didn't want supression |
| Chechnya | Muslim area of USSR; Russian occupation since 1994-100,000 deaths |
| Vladimir Putin | 2000-2008; president of Russia; former KGB officer; promotes capitalism; current prime minister |
| Dimitri Medvedev | 2008; elected president after Putin, who became prime minister |
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