Curated category
Joseph Stalin
- Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin signed his articles "K. Stalin", an alias drawn from the Russian word for steel, translated as "Man of Steel." The man who chose it was born…
- German–Soviet Axis talksOn the 23rd of August 1939, the world watched as two enemies signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow. The German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop and…
- Soviet offensive plans controversyThe year 1988 marked the beginning of a historical firestorm when Viktor Suvorov published Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War.
- Tito–Stalin splitOn the 6th of April 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The country surrendered just eleven days later, and its government fled to London.
- 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…
- Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin was born in the village of Kukarka, Yaransk Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate. He grew up as the son of a merchant and spent his…
- Marxism–LeninismA poster from 1936 in the Soviet Union declared "Raise the banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!" This image captured a moment when four distinct…
- Potsdam ConferenceThe Potsdam Conference opened on the 17th of July 1945 at Cecilienhof in Potsdam, near Berlin. Harry S. Truman had just assumed the presidency after Franklin…
- Yalta ConferenceThe Yalta Conference opened on the 4th of February 1945 inside the Livadia Palace. This grand estate sat near the Black Sea resort town of Yalta in Crimea.
- Death and state funeral of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin, the second leader of the Soviet Union, died on the 5th of March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke.
- Battle of StalingradOn the 28th of June 1942, the German Army Group South began its attack into southern Russia. This offensive, code-named Case Blue, aimed to capture vital…
- GulagThe word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to…
- Population transfer in the Soviet UnionIn 1930, the Soviet government began moving millions of farmers labeled as kulaks to remote regions. These deportations marked the first time an entire…
- Iron CurtainTheater stages in the early twentieth century installed iron safety curtains to slow the spread of fire. This literal barrier became a metaphor for political…
- RDS-1The Kurchatov Institute, then officially known as Laboratory Number 2, began work on the RDS-1 device in April 1946. Plutonium for this weapon came from the…
- Katyn massacreOn the 17th of September 1939, the Red Army advanced into Poland with little resistance. Polish forces under orders from their own government did not engage…
- Stalinist architectureIn February 1931, major Soviet architects received invitations to bid for the Palace of Soviets design. This competition marked a turning point where the…
- Soviet famine of 1946–1947The Soviet Union emerged from World War II with more than 25 million citizens dead and its western agricultural infrastructure in ruins.