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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 took place on the 8th of December 10 between United States president Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
  • 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 speechAnthony R. Dolan, Ronald Reagan's chief speechwriter in 1983, coined the phrase evil empire for the president to use. Dolan had included similar language in…
  • 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 NoteOn the 10th of March 1952, Andrei Gromyko delivered a diplomatic note to representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in Berlin.
  • 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.
  • CominformIn September 1947, delegates gathered in Szklarska Poręba, a small town in the Sudetes mountains of Poland. Joseph Stalin called this meeting to address…
  • 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 began its planning in May 1985 when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko approached U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz during…
  • Soviet involvement in regime changeIn August 1921, Soviet forces crossed the border into Mongolia to rescue a fragile revolution. The Red Army moved from multiple directions to capture key…
  • 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 LineIn December 1919, the Supreme War Council published a map and description of a new border line. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, had proposed this…
  • Common European HomeLeonid Brezhnev used the phrase Common European Home during a visit to Bonn, West Germany in 1981. This early usage likely aimed to sow discord between the…
  • 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 Dardanelles and Bosporus form two sequential gateways between the Black Sea and Mediterranean. These waterways served as a vital trade route for Turkey…
  • 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…