Soviet Union

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  10/9/2020
  

  The Political History of Concealing Illness, from Brezhnev to Trump

  by Joy Neumeyer

  Like his Communist counterparts, Trump’s predilection for pageantry offers a hollow illusion of vitality while letting potentially fatal problems fester.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2020
  

  Did the US Try to Assassinate Lenin in 1918?

  A new book demonstrates that the United States and western allies attempted to thwart the Bolshevik revolution and actually started the Cold War with an ill-fated 1918 invasion of Russia, but is on more speculative ground tracing an assassination attempt against Lenin to the US.  

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2020
  

  Donald Kendall, Who Built Pepsico into a Soda and Snack-Food Giant, Dies at 99

  The late president of Pepsi-Cola was a leader in bringing American products to the Soviet bloc and Communist China during the cold war and was influential in pushing Richard Nixon to support the CIA's coup against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/25/2020
  

  New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

  Although the Soviet Union succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb more than three times more powerful than the largest U.S.-tested weapon, most military leaders in the cold war sought to make the weapons smaller for strategic reasons. Recently declassified Soviet video shows the test. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  7/22/2020
  

  Russian Historian Jailed In Controversial Sex Abuse Case

  In May, more than 150 Russians, including artists, actors and writers wrote an open letter to the court in support of the historian, saying they were "sure the accusations… are unfair and should be dismissed by the court".

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/2/2020
  

  How History Will Judge the Complicit

  by Anne Appelbaum

  Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

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• SOURCE: Moscow Times
  5/22/2020
  

  Concerns Raised for Detained Gulag Historian Yury Dmitriyev

  U.K. calls for early release after court rejects lawyers’ argument Dmitriyev is at risk of the coronavirus in Karelian detention center.

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• SOURCE: TIME
  4/27/2020
  

  Inside the Mission to Perform Bone-Marrow Transplants on Survivors of the Chernobyl Disaster

  "Nevertheless, the next ten days demonstrated the value of international medical cooperation in moments of crisis, even when politics might make success seem impossible." writes Yair Reisner, an Israeli doctor whose help was requested by Russian officials after the disaster.

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• SOURCE: The American Interest
  4/11/2020
  

  The Forgotten Women of the Gulag

  A new book by Monika Zgustova brings the harrowing, heartbreaking history of the Soviet Gulag’s female prisoners to life.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/5/2020
  

  The Truth About Stalin’s Prison Camps

  Vera Golubeva spent more than six years in one of Joseph Stalin’s gulag camps. Her crime? “To this day, I still don’t know,” she says.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/3/2020
  

  Critics of Bernie Sanders’s trip to the Soviet Union are distorting it

  by Yana Skorobogatov, Yakov Feygin and Artemy M. Kalinovsky

  Historians Yana Skorobogatov and Yakov Feygin and Eastern European scholar Artemy M. Kalinovsky contextualize Sanders' opinions on the Soviet Union.

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• 2/9/20
  

  The Cold War New and Old: Architectural Exchanges Beyond the West

  by Łukasz Stanek

  Until today, many urban landscapes in West Africa bear witness to how local authorities and professionals drew on Soviet prefabrication technology, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/4/20
  

  We’re Still Living in Stalin’s World

  by Diana Preston

  At the Yalta Conference 75 years ago, the Soviet leader got everything he wanted — and shaped global politics for decades.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/2/2019
  

  China Isn’t the Soviet Union. Confusing the Two Is Dangerous.

  by Melvyn P. Leffler

  An unusual confluence of events World War II led to America’s bitter rivalry with the U.S.S.R. That pattern is not repeating.

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• 11/24/19
  

  Russian Victories in the Post-Cold War Era

  by Albert M. Camarillo

  Putin’s Russia is winning battles to destabilize the U.S. that former USSR leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev had tried but failed.

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• 10/27/19
  

  1949: A Crucial Year for America, Russia, China and the World

  by Kevin M. Shanley

  It’s valuable to revisit three events of global importance from 70 years ago and reflect on how global events intertwine with personal histories.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  September 27, 2019
  

  She's Rising from the Depths of Soviet Music History

  by Gabrielle Cornish

  Interest is building in Galina Ustvolskaya, the reclusive Russian composer born 100 years ago whose nickname was “the lady with the hammer.”

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• 9/29/19
  

  Betrayal in Berlin: Soviet Disinformation and the Berlin Crisis

  by Steve Vogel

  While Russian bots and fake Facebook accounts are relatively new, efforts to undercut Western values and democracy and sow division among allies have long been part of the playbook for Russian and Soviet intelligence.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  9/24/19
  

  A Slain Jewish Girl’s Diary of Life Under the Soviets and the Nazis

  At a moment when basic agreement over simple truths has become a political battleground and history a weapon, the publication of the book, “Renia’s Diary,” offers a reminder of the power of bearing witness.

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• SOURCE: Time
  9/3/19
  

  World War II Launched a New Age of Global Power. 80 Years After the War Began, That Era Is Ending

  by David Kaiser

  The world order created after World War II has begun to collapse.