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Soviet soldier taking a photograph of another soldier in Red Square, Moscow, 1959

Eastern Europe

Soviet Union

Portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China, 1972.

East Asia

China

Aerial view of National Mall

North America

United States

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Eastern Europe

Poland

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Eastern Europe

The Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik) in Berlin

Eastern Europe

East Germany

Sino-Soviet Relations

Soviet Foreign Policy

A photo of Joseph Stalin from 1943

Stalin, Joseph

1879- 1953

Nikita Khrushchev at the UNGA, 1962.

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich

1894- 1971

Kim Il Sung, 1978

Kim, Il Sung

1912- 1994

Sino-Soviet Split, 1960-1984

Jan Nowak-Jeziorański broadcasting for Radio Free Europe, 3 May 1952

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty

Fidel Castro, 1959.

Castro, Fidel

1926- 2016

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Mitrokhin, Vasili

1922- 2004

Mitrokhin Archive

Cuban Foreign Relations

Leonid Brezhnev, 1974.

Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich

1906- 1982

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November 9, 1962	Memorandum from William R. Tyler to the Secretary [Dean Rusk] through U. Alexis Johnson, 'Turkish and Italian IRBM's' Seymour Weiss would push back against any efforts to remove the Jupiters, but he and others realized that President Kennedy had a “keen interest” in the matter and that Secretary of Defense McNamara had ordered that action be taken (assigning his General Counsel John McNaughton to take the lead). Nevertheless Weiss and Assistant Secretary of State William Tyler presented Secretary of State Rusk with a memorandum making the case against action on the Jupiters or at least postponing their removal until a “later time.” Paralleling arguments made during the crisis by Ambassadors Hare and Reinhardt, Tyler pointed to the “symbolic and psychological importance” of the Jupiter deployments. While Tyler noted parenthetically that the Italians had “given indications of a disposition to work toward the eventual removal of the Jupiters,” the U.S. could not phase them out “without general Alliance agreement,” including Italy and Turkey’s consent, “unless we are prepared to lay ourselves open to the charge of abrogation of specific or implied agreements.” Rusk was in the know on the secret deal, but his reference to a “later time” was consistent with it and signing the memo would have placated Tyler and Weiss.
May 18, 1925	J.V. Stalin, 'The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the Far East: Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, May 18, 1925' After World War I, several communist movements tried to replicate the Bolsheviks’ take-over of Russia in European countries, most importantly and most often in Germany. All failed. As a result, the Soviet leadership and communists worldwide from around 1920 focused more energies on colonized countries, especially in Asia. As most of these seemed to lack the economic and sociopolitical conditions necessary for a communist revolution, the aim was to weaken if not overthrow European imperial rule, serving the interests of both the USSR and the local petit bourgeoisie, peasants, and few industrial workers. The perhaps greatest price was China. Moreover, India was seen to be (exceptionally) ripe for direct communist action. Communists and some anti-colonial nationalists were also active in and across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, often sharing resources while being networked with the Communist International. Abbreviated as the Comintern (also the Third International), the latter was thekey international communist organization: founded in 1919 in Moscow, headquartered there, and employing through its dissolution in 1943 thousands of professional cadres from around the world, principally from Europe and Asia, as Brigitte Studer’s Reisende der Weltrevolution: Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale (2020) shows. Also in the Soviet Union, the year 1920 saw the landmark Congress of the Peoples of the East, in Baku. And in 1921, the Communist University for Laborers of the East (Kommunistichyeskii univyersityet trudyaschikhsya Vostoka, KUTV) opened its doors in Moscow. It became the first full-fledged Soviet training center for Soviet Muslims and for foreign communist cadres, principally from Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, and it impacted Soviet views of the East, as Lana Ravandi-Fadai and Masha Kirasirova have shown in “Red Mecca” (2015) and “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration” (2017), respectively. The text here is the English translation, published in 1954 in the collection J. V. Stalin: Works: Volume 7, of a Russian text published in 1925 in the principal Soviet newspaper, Pravda, rendering a speech that the 1924-1953 Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) held to KUTV’s students in 1925.
July 6, 1963	Notes from the Conversation of Comrade Hysni Kapo with the Chinese Ambassador Luo Shigao on 6 July 1963 [Excerpt] Hysni Kapo and Luo Shigao discuss the state of the international communist movement, reviewing developments country by country.
March 24, 1987	Information Summary: 'On the Measures for Counteracting Ideological Diversions against the Soviet Baltic Republics' In February 1987, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party – the supreme political authority in the Soviet Union – sought to address the ever-growing vocal support in the international community for the independence of the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). The resulting Politburo decree, titled “On the Measures for Counteracting Ideological Diversions against the Soviet Baltic Republics,” was summarized for the KGB of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic by Lt. Colonel Vilius P. Kontrimas, deputy chief of the First Department (foreign intelligence) on March 24, 1987.
December 21, 1949	Congratulatory Remarks [Delivered at] the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow Mao attends Stalin’s 70th birthday celebration, offering praise for his leadership of the socialist and internationalist movements.
June 27, 1990	National Intelligence Daily for Wednesday, 27 June 1990 The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily for 27 June 1990 describes the latest developments in the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, the European Community, Zambia, Iran and China.
July 19, 1990	National Intelligence Daily for Thursday, 19 July 1990 The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily for 19 July 1990 describes the latest developments in Germanys, the Soviet Union, Iraq, Spain, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
January 27, 1990	National Intelligence Daily for Saturday, 27 January 1990 The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily for 27 January 1990 describes the latest developments in the Soviet Union, Germanys, Panama, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and South Korea.
September 5, 1968	Yurii Andropov, Nikolai Shchelokov, and Mikhail Malyarov to the CPSU CC This memorandum, signed by Yurii Andropov, the chairman of the Soviet Committee of State Security (KGB); Nikolai Shchelokov, the Minister of Public Order (whose ministry was renamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs in late November 1968); and Mikhail Molyarov, the Procurator of the USSR, was sent to the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) eleven days after the demonstration in Red Square against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. The document lays out the basic facts of the case as viewed by the KGB and the CPSU. The document mentions the names of the eight activists who were in Red Square as well as two who helped with planning but were not actually in Red Square, Inna Korkhova and Maiya Rusakovskaya. Natal’ya Gorbanevskaya, one of the eight, was detained but released because she had recently given birth. However, a year later she was arrested in connection with her involvement and sentenced to a harsh term in a psychiatric prison.
April 13, 1962	From the Journal of S.M. Kudryavtsev, 'Record of Conversation with Fidel Castro Ruz, Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, 16 March 1962' Kudryavtsev and Castro discuss diplomatic normalization between the USSR and Ecuador and a CPSU CC letter directed at restoring global unity of the Communist movement, and a report from Inchaustegui suggests renewed US attacks against Cuba.