Russia headquarters of communism · Headquarters of Communism in Russia
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Headquarters of Communism in Russia
Headquarters of Communism in Russia
World War I strained Imperial Russia's governmental and social institutions to the breaking point, allowing a revolution to overthrow an unpopular government and form a socialist, one-party rule, resulting in a brutal civil war lasting until late 1920. After Lenin's death in 1924, a power struggle ensued, with Josef Stalin emerging as the new leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin's brutal rule (1928-53) introduced an economic system called "socialism in one country" that rapidly industrialised the country while completely abandoning many of the idealistic collectivist principals which the revolutionaries of October 1917 had fought for.
World War II, from a Soviet perspective, between June 1941 and May 1945, added to the woes of the Soviet peoples and led to the deaths of 25-30 million citizens. Their alliance with the Western nations in the fight against, and eventual defeat of, Nazism was a tremendous and courageous achievement, and their capture of Berlin their greatest moment in that War.
After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet economy continued to grow strongly under Georgy Malenkov (1953-1955) and Nikita Khrushchev (1955-1964), focusing more resources in production of consumer goods. The Soviet Union eventually reached its political, military, and economic peak during the closing years of Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982), but subsequent stagnation caused a crisis that would continue until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize the political system. His initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the empire collapsed into 15 separate independent countries.
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Russia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.