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Samantha Smith
Samantha Reed Smith (June 29, 1972 – August 25, 1985) was an American peace activist and child actress from Manchester, Maine, who became famous for her anti-war outreaches during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1982, Smith wrote a letter to the newly appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, and received a personal reply with an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, which she accepted. Smith attracted extensive media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador", becoming known as America's Youngest Ambassador and subsequently participating in peacemaking activities in Japan. With the assistance of her father, Arthur, (an academic), she wrote a book titled ''Journey to the Soviet Union'', which chronicled her visit to the country. She later became a child actress, hosting a child-oriented special on the 1984 United States presidential election for The Disney Channel and playing a co-starr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artek (camp)
Artek (russian: Арте́к) is an international children's center (a former Young Pioneer camp) on the Black Sea in the town of Gurzuf located on the Crimean Peninsula, near Ayu-Dag. It was established on 16 June 1925. The camp first hosted only 80 children but then grew rapidly. In 1969 it had an area of 3.2 km2 (790 acres). The camp consisted of 150 buildings, including three medical facilities, a school, the film studio Artekfilm, three swimming pools, a stadium with a seating capacity of 7,000 and playgrounds for various other activities. Unlike most of the young pioneer camps, Artek was an all-year camp, due to the warm climate. Artek was considered to be a privilege for Soviet children during its existence, as well as for children from other communist countries. During its heyday, 27,000 children a year vacationed at Artek. Between 1925 and 1969 the camp hosted 300,000 children including more than 13,000 children from 70 foreign countries. After the breaking up of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1984 United States Presidential Election
The 1984 United States presidential election was the 50th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1984. Incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale, in a landslide, winning 525 electoral votes and 58.8 percent of the popular vote. No other candidate in history has matched Reagan's electoral vote total. This is the most recent US presidential election in which a candidate received over 500 electoral votes, as well as the most recent election in which both major party candidates are deceased, and the last time that a major party candidate failed to carry more than 100 electoral votes. Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush faced only token opposition in their bid for re-nomination. Mondale faced a competitive field in his bid, defeating Colorado Senator Gary Hart, activist Jesse Jackson and several other candidates in the 1984 Democratic primaries. He eventually chose U.S. Representat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitrokhin Archive
The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks. His defection was not officially announced until 1999. The official historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew, wrote two books, ''The Sword and the Shield'' (1999) and ''The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World'' (2005), based on material in the archives. The books purport to provide details about many of the Soviet Union's clandestine intelligence operations around the world. They also provide specifics about Guy Burgess, a British diplomat with a short career in MI6, said to be frequently under the influence of alcohol; the archive indicates that he gave the KGB at least 389 top secret documents in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Andrew (historian)
Christopher Maurice Andrew, (born 23 July 1941) is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services. Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, former Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, Official Historian of the Security Service (MI5), Honorary Air Commodore of 7006 (VR) Intelligence Squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, Chairman of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, and former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew served as co-editor of ''Intelligence and National Security'', and a presenter of BBC radio and TV documentaries, including the Radio Four series ''What If?''. His twelve previous books include a number of studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history. Life He is currently a governor of Norwich School where in the 1950s he was a pupil, and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (russian: link=no, Васи́лий Ники́тич Митро́хин; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992 after providing the British embassy in Riga with a vast collection of his notes purporting to be written copies of KGB files. These became known as the Mitrokhin Archives. The intelligence files given by Mitrokhin to the MI6 exposed an unknown number of Soviet agents, including Melita Norwood. He was co-author with Christopher Andrew of ''The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West'', a massive account of Soviet intelligence operations based on copies of material from the archive. The second volume, ''The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB in the World'', was published in 2005, soon after Mitrokhin's death. Education Mitrokhin was born in Yurasovo, in Central Rus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, in particular the Gulag system. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. While still young, Solzhenitsyn lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically-minded Eastern Orthodox Christian. As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for nuclear disarmament, peace, and human rights. He became renowned as the designer of the Soviet Union's RDS-37, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he faced state persecution; these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, is named in his honor. Biography Early life Sakharov was born in Moscow on May 21, 1921. His father was Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, a physics professor and an amateur pianist. His father taught at the Second Moscow State University. Andrei's gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warsaw Pact Invasion Of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia refers to the events of 20–21 August 1968, when the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). About 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops (afterwards rising to about 500,000), supported by thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircraft, participated in the overnight operation, which was code-named Operation Danube. The Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania refused to participate, while East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, were ordered by Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion because of fears of greater resistance if German troops were in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the Soviet Union (USSR). The Hungarian Revolution began on 23 October 1956 in Budapest when university students appealed to the civil populace to join them at the Hungarian Parliament Building to protest against the USSR's geopolitical domination of Hungary with the Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi. A delegation of students entered the building of Hungarian Radio to broadcast their sixteen demands for political and economic reforms to the civil society of Hungary, but they were instead detained by security guards. When the student protestors outside the radio building demanded the release of their delegation of students, policemen from the ÁVH (Államvédelmi Hatóság) state protection author ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western World
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.Western Civilization Our Tradition; James Kurth; accessed 30 August 2011 The Western world is also known as the Occident (from the word ''occidēns'' "setting down, sunset, west") in contrast to the Eastern world known as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leader Of The Soviet Union
During its 69-year history, the Soviet Union usually had a ''de facto'' leader who would not necessarily be head of state but would lead while holding an office such as premier or general secretary. Under the 1977 Constitution, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier, was the head of government and the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was the head of state. The office of the chairman of the Council of Ministers was comparable to a prime minister in the First World whereas the office of the chairman of the Presidium was comparable to a president. In the ideology of Vladimir Lenin, the head of the Soviet state was a collegiate body of the vanguard party (as described in ''What Is To Be Done?''). Following Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s, the post of the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party became synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union, because the post controlled both the Communist Party and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1982 and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet between 1960 and 1964 and again between 1977 and 1982. His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretary remains debated by historians; while his rule was characterised by political stability and significant foreign policy successes, it was also marked by corruption, inefficiency, economic stagnation, and rapidly growing technological gaps with the West. Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev join ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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