Fall 2024

On Saturday, August 24, 1991, a huge crowd surrounded the buildings of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CC-CPSU) on Staraya Square in Moscow. The defeat of the conservative putsch that had begun on August …

It is very difficult to address an audience after a film like the one we have just seen in this large theater, especially since this screening was attended by the few surviving former prisoners of Solovki, who have spoken to …

The disturbances in Kazakhstan in December 1986, the demonstrations by the Crimean Tartars in Moscow and those in the Baltic states in 1987-88, the incidents in Yakutia and Uzbekistan, the increased activity of the Russian “patriotic” association, Pamyat (“Memory”), the …

In the history of Soviet culture, the spring of 1987 will go down as a time of significant changes. A year ago we could only speak of a “thaw,” major changes in the principal branches of culture. But as of …

Certain changes in the USSR’s domestic and foreign policy, the swift replacement of high-ranking leaders, the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, and, of course, the Chernobyl disaster have riveted all attention, causing little notice to be paid to the recent changes in …

The changes in the Soviet leadership have been of great interest not only because they represent shifts of emphasis in the U.S.S.R.’s foreign and domestic policies. Considerable attention has also been focused on the relations between the authorities and the …

In the U.S.S.R. the death of the leader of the party and state is a political event of extraordinary significance, usually marking the end of an era. Protracted tenure in office permits Soviet leaders to conclude a fair number of …

On October 2, 1964, shortly after his meeting with Sukarno, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev flew south for a holiday, which he spent in his newly built dacha not far from Sochi. The dacha was a real palace: its indoor swimming pools …