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Curated category

Foreign relations of the Soviet Union

  • NATOOn the 4th of April 1949, twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty and bound their fates together with a single sentence.
  • Molotov PlanVyacheslav Molotov rejected the Marshall Plan in 1947, but his economic system had been operating since 1945. The Soviet Union began bilateral trade…
  • KGBThe KGB, or Committee for State Security, was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. Its name in Russian, Komitet gosudarstvennoy…
  • Washington Summit (1987)The Washington Summit of 1987 brought Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev together for three days in December at the White House.
  • German–Soviet Axis talksIn November 1940, Vyacheslav Molotov stepped off a train in Berlin to what should have been an impossible scene: an orchestra inside Nazi Germany playing The…
  • Reykjavík SummitThe Reykjavík Summit, held on the 11th and the 12th of October 1986, came within a single word of ending the nuclear age.
  • Sinatra DoctrineThe Sinatra Doctrine was named not in a diplomatic cable or a formal treaty, but in a quip delivered to reporters by a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman.
  • Tehran ConferenceThe USS Iowa dropped anchor in the Caspian Sea on the 27th of November 1943. President Franklin D. Roosevelt stepped off a plane at Baku and traveled by…
  • Soviet Union and the United NationsIn 1945, the Soviet Union became a charter member of the United Nations. Joseph Stalin initially hesitated to join the group. US president Franklin D.
  • Warsaw PactThe Warsaw Pact was born on the 14th of May 1955, eight days after West Germany joined NATO. Its founding declaration accused a remilitarized Western Germany…
  • Evil Empire speechRonald Reagan gave the Evil Empire speech on the 8th of March 1983. Speaking before the National Association of Evangelicals, the American president called…
  • Able Archer 83Able Archer 83 was a NATO military exercise that began on the 7th of November 1983, and it nearly ended the world. For five days, military commands across…
  • Active measuresThe word disinformation entered the Soviet lexicon in 1923. Joseph Stalin reportedly coined the term to sound French and deceive other nations into believing…
  • Stalin NoteThe Stalin Note reached representatives of the United States, Britain, and France on the 10th of March 1952. Andrei Gromyko delivered it on behalf of the…
  • Potsdam ConferenceThe Potsdam Conference opened on the 17th of July 1945, just sixteen days after the most destructive war in human history had ended in Europe.
  • Nuclear arms raceThe nuclear arms race began not with a treaty or a speech, but with 187 liters of heavy water smuggled out of Norway ahead of a German invasion.
  • Revolutions of 1989The Revolutions of 1989 began with a single trade union. On the 14th of August 1980, workers at a shipyard in Gdansk walked off the job, setting in motion a…
  • Congo CrisisThe Congo Crisis began on the 30th of June 1960, the very day the Republic of the Congo celebrated its independence from Belgium.
  • CominformOn the 5th of October 1947, nine communist parties across Europe signed their names to a new organization in Szklarska Poręba, Poland.
  • Molotov–Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in Moscow on the 24th of August 1939, and within a week Germany had invaded Poland.
  • Iron CurtainFrom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Winston Churchill spoke those words on the 5th of…
  • Berlin Crisis of 1961The Berlin Crisis of 1961 brought the Cold War closer to open conflict than any event since the Second World War ended. At its peak, American and Soviet…
  • Geneva Summit (1985)The Geneva Summit of 1985 brought Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev face to face for the first time on the 19th of November, 1985, in a lakeside villa…
  • Soviet involvement in regime changeSoviet involvement in regime change turned personal when Josip Broz Tito wrote to Joseph Stalin: 'Stop sending people to kill me.' Yugoslav security forces…
  • Soviet occupation zone in GermanyOn the 2nd of August 1945, the Soviet Union established control over a specific middle portion of Germany through the Potsdam Agreement.
  • Curzon LineThe Curzon Line is a border that was drawn on a map before it was ever drawn on the ground. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, first proposed it in…
  • Common European HomeThe "Common European Home" was a geopolitical concept created and championed by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
  • We will bury youNikita Khrushchev stood before Western ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow on the 18th of November 1956. The room held envoys from twelve NATO…
  • Turkish Straits crisisThe Turkish Straits crisis began in the summer of 1946 when the Soviet Union handed Turkey a note demanding that the rules governing the narrow waterways…
  • Berlin BlockadeThe Berlin Blockade began at one minute past midnight on the 24th of June 1948, when Stalin ordered Soviet troops to cut every railway, road, and canal…