The Soviet Union, officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a federal sovereign state in northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, in practice its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centers were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometers (4,500 mi) north to south. Its territory included much of Eastern Europe, as well as part of Northern Europe and all of Northern and Central Asia. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday he did not want Russia to return to the late Soviet-era practice of having lifelong rulers who died in office without a proper succession strategy. Reuters - Published
Highlights of Today in History: Benjamin Franklin born; Soviet and Polish forces liberate Warsaw; Eisenhower farewell address; Japan earthquake; Al Capone is born;Muhammad Ali born.
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Russia on Friday honored two members of the British "Cambridge Five" spy ring who passed information to the Soviet Union with a memorial plaque and a tribute from the head of Russia's foreign.. Reuters - Published
They were Soviet-born businessmen who became fixtures on the Republican donor set. Then they played an unlikely role in the proceedings gripping the nation. NYTimes.com - Published
Yuri Luzhkov, who as Moscow mayor transformed the drab former capital of the Soviet Union into a glitzy playground for Russia's super-rich with help from his construction magnate wife, has died aged.. Reuters - Published
The Soviet Union no longer exists and Russia has limited power. Terrorism, immigration and Turkey today pose problems for which NATO has no solution.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday criticized NATO's continued expansion, something he suggested was pointless given the absence of a threat from Moscow following the 1991 collapse of the.. Reuters - Published
Expansion has brought Nato's frontiers 1,000 miles (1,600km) closer to Moscow. Countries once occupied by the Red Army and incorporated into the Soviet Union, like the three Baltic republics, or former.. WorldNews - Published
Moscow (CNN)Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev may be remembered today as the man who presided over the collapse of an empire: The recent anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 saw.. WorldNews - Published
The Kremlin on Wednesday paid tribute to a late Soviet intelligence officer it credits with helping foil a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt, saying her career.. Reuters - Published
Goar Vartanian worked with her husband to expose German agents during second world war An Armenian woman who became a Soviet spy and helped foil a Nazi plot to assassinate Stalin, Churchill and.. WorldNews - Published
A Chinese magazine may have accidentally committed espionage after it published what appeared to be the first image of a top-secret missile system. The apparent gaffe came in a centrefold graphic.. WorldNews - Published
Western diplomats have expressed concern over reports a senior Uzbek official threatened journalists, rare public criticism of a tightly controlled former Soviet republic that has begun opening up its.. Reuters - Published
After their surprise election in 2016, neither of the two sitting opposition candidates were allowed to stand this time. Strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko plans to stand again in presidential.. WorldNews - Published
Georgia's failure to pass a planned electoral reform is disappointing, a European rights body and the U.S. embassy said on Friday, urging lawmakers in the former Soviet state to approve the measure in.. Reuters - Published
Socialism didn't work in the Soviet Union. On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that's an important reminder to today's millennials.
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Moldovan President Igor Dodon said on Thursday the former Soviet republic's coalition government could collapse following a move by the prime minister to take on powers to nominate the prosecutor.. Reuters - Published
On June 12, 1987 — more than 25 years after the Berlin Wall first divided the city’s East and West — U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin,.. WorldNews - Published
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday compared his main rival in the upcoming election to former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who garnered infamy for killing millions in labor camps... WorldNews - Published
Apple TV+'s 'For All Mankind' writes alternate history with a Soviet moon landing, but tries to stay grounded with real people and events.
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The bunker is hidden deep in the forests of Poland (Image: Wojciech Stephan) A colony of cannibal ants has escaped from a Soviet nuclear weapons base in Poland. In 2016, scientists found a community of.. WorldNews - Published
On April 28, 1986 the Soviet government grudgingly acknowledged an explosion and release of radiation at a nuclear power plant. Jane Pauley reports. CBS News - Published
Former Representative Charlie Wilson convinced Congress to arm Afghan freedom fighters battling the Soviets in the 1980s. Now he tells Mike Wallace that the U.S. failed to provide enough aid when the.. CBS News - Published
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, has warned against building a new physical or invisible wall between Russia and the West, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reuters - Published
The Berlin Wall, which for decades had divided not just a city but a country, and all of Europe, fell in November 1989, and history accelerated its march. Such moments test the responsibility and.. WorldNews - Published
Hong Kong (CNN Business)Sometimes being first isn't all it's cracked up to be. Google (GOOGL) raced past China this week in the quest for "quantum supremacy" with its claim that a machine developed by.. WorldNews - Published
Russia has never had an African colony. It stayed out of the scramble for Africa, only engaging with African states in the 19th Century. In 1869, for instance, the Russians gave Ethiopia military.. WorldNews - Published
After the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the USSR needed to develop its own A-bomb fast to keep parity. The declassified papers provide a glimpse into how the elaborate task was.. WorldNews - Published
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, warned on Friday that the world was drifting into a dangerous era of militarised politics and appealed to Moscow and Washington to sit down for urgent nuclear.. Reuters - Published
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev lambasted the Trump administration on Thursday for trying to create a "toxic atmosphere" around Cuba, during a two-day trip to the island demonstrating Russia's.. WorldNews - Published
Jack Barsky held a job at some of the top corporations in the U.S. and lived a seemingly normal life -- all while spying for the Soviet Union; then, ballet has lifted Misty Copeland from poverty, over.. CBS News - Published
For the second time in three years, Ukraine, the former Soviet republic between Russia and the West, has been caught in the glare of US news cameras because of an American political drama. In 2016, the.. WorldNews - Published
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