Revolutions and Leaders
The Soviet Leader from 1924-1953 who led Russia through WWII and transformed Russia from an agricultural to a complex industrial state.
Who is Joseph Stalin
U.S. policy aimed at stopping the spread of communism.
What is the Containment Policy?
Stalin’s system of forced labor camps.
What are Gulags?
Military alliance of the US and western European capitalist countries formed in 1949.
What is NATO?
Vladimir Putin annexed this Ukrainian region in 2014 for its Black Sea ports and pro-Russian population.
What is Crimea?
This political party led by Lenin seized power in the 1917 Russian Revolution.
What are the Bolsheviks?
Truman’s 1947 speech urging Congress to aid Greece and Turkey.
What is the Truman Doctrine?
This 1986 disaster in Ukraine became a symbol of Soviet mismanagement.
(Answer: What is the Chernobyl Incident?)
This country was invaded in 2022 by Russia in order to prevent it from joining NATO and obtain ethnically Russian territory.
What is Ukraine?
This group of wealthy Russian businessmen often worked closely with the government.
What are Russian Oligarchs?
This process under Khrushchev aimed to undo Stalin’s harsh policies.
What is De-Stalinization?
This U.S. economic aid plan helped rebuild Europe after WWII to prevent communist influence.
What is the Marshall Plan?
Gorbachev’s policy of greater freedom of speech and expression.
(Answer: What is Glasnost?)
Created in 1955, this is the military alliance of the USSR and its satellite states.
What is the Warsaw Pact?
This describes Putin’s style of governance blending elections with heavy state control.
What is Managed Democracy?
This Soviet leader introduced “Glasnost” and “Perestroika.”
Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?
The USSR responded to the Marshall Plan with this aid program for its allies within the Eastern Bloc.
What is the Molotov Plan?
Gorbachev’s policy of “rebuilding” introducing capitalist elements to save the economy.
(Answer: What is Perestroika?)
Final deathblow to the USSR when Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus formed an autonomous state.
What is the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)?
The first president of the Russian Federation and the mastermind of the policy of shock therapy.
Who is Boris Yeltsin
This Soviet leader helped usher in the period of "detente" during the 1960s and 1970s.
Who is Leonid Brezhnev
The policy for NATO that when one nation is attacked it is considered an attack on all.
What is NATO Article V?
These wealthy peasants were targeted by Stalin’s collectivization policies.
Who are the Kulaks?
The Soviet Union invaded this middle eastern country in 1979 to prevent Islamic and Western influence from spreading into Central Asia.
What is Afghanistan?
The third president of the Russian Federation who served from 2008-2012 and is considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
Who is Dmitry Medvedev?