Glossary
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16th Party Conference of the VKP(b) (April 1929)
XVI Всесоюзная конференция ВКП(б)The 16th All-Union Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), held in Moscow from 23 to 29 April 1929. 254 voting (decisive-voice) delegates and 679 consultative (advisory-voice) delegates participated. The central agenda item was the First Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy, reported by Alexei Rykov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, and Valerian Kuibyshev. The conference approved the 'optimal' variant of the plan and condemned the Right Opposition of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.
1922 Confiscation of Church Valuables
изъятие церковных ценностей 1922 годаFrom February to May 1922, the Soviet regime forcibly confiscated gold, silver, and jeweled liturgical objects from Orthodox and other religious institutions under the pretext of famine relief for the Volga region. Lenin's secret letter of March 19, 1922, ordered the party to deliver a ruthless blow to the clergy and 'suppress their resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades'; the campaign included the Shuya massacre, 231 show trials, and the execution of roughly 2,000 clergy and laity. Of the approximately 4.5 million gold rubles' worth of valuables seized, only about 1 million was spent on famine relief; the rest was consumed by the cost of the campaign itself or embezzled.
1936 Soviet Constitution (Stalin Constitution)
Конституция СССР 1936 года (Сталинская конституция)The second constitution of the USSR, adopted on 5 December 1936 by the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets. It granted all citizens universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot and codified rights to work, rest, education, and social security, while Soviet leaders hailed it as 'the most democratic constitution in the world.' Yet it was adopted on the very eve of the Great Terror, and the dramatic gap between its enumerated civil rights and the ensuing mass repression became a defining historical paradox, one that raises a fundamental question about the meaning of a written constitution under a totalitarian regime.
1987 System
87년 체제 (八七年體制)The political-economic and labor regime of South Korea formed through the June Democratic Uprising and the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987, and a discourse naming the end of authoritarian rule and the institutionalization of formal democracy. Politically it institutionalized direct presidential elections amid a certain balance of forces among pro-democracy currents; economically it rested on labor-management autonomy grounded in neoliberalism and market absolutism alongside continued chaebol-led growth. In labor it established the enterprise-union system as the prototype of militant economism created by the Chunno-hyup. After the 1997 crisis, labor-market flexibilization, non-regular employment, and intra-working-class inequality deepened, making it the subject of sustained crisis discourse.
1988 Law on Cooperatives
Закон СССР «О кооперации в СССР»Adopted by the USSR Supreme Soviet on 26 May 1988 and in force from 1 July 1988 (No. 8998-XI), the law defined a cooperative as an organization of citizens who voluntarily unite on the basis of membership, with property they own, lease or hold in free use, operating on autonomy, self-government and self-financing. It recognized production cooperatives making goods and paid services and consumer cooperatives serving members' and other citizens' trade, household-service, housing, dacha and garage needs, and gave them autonomy over prices and wages and the right to hire non-members, permitting any activity not prohibited by law. The most radical economic legislation of perestroika, it gave legal standing to private enterprise and wage labor for the first time in decades after the end of NEP.
19th All-Union Party Conference (1988)
XIX Всесоюзная партийная конференция КПССAn All-Union Party Conference of the CPSU held in Moscow from 28 June to 1 July 1988, and the last such conference, convened after a 47-year gap since the 1941 conference. Delegates adopted five resolutions: on democratization of Soviet society and reform of the political system, on fighting bureaucracy, on inter-ethnic relations, on glasnost and on legal reform. Gorbachev used the authority of the whole party to push political reform, moving power from the party apparatus to elected soviets: elections to soviets at all levels with multiple candidacies and secret ballots, and a Congress of People's Deputies, though conservative resistance forced compromises. By the assessment of a number of historians, the conference was one of the most important events in advancing perestroika.
1st Sisak Partisan Detachment
1. Sisački partizanski odredThe first Partisan armed anti-fascist unit in Yugoslavia, formed in the Sisak area on 22 June 1941. That day, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the outlawed Communist Party of Croatia drew communists out of the city for fear of arrest inside the Independent State of Croatia, the Nazi puppet state, and the group soon began armed resistance through railway sabotage and armed attacks. Sources differ over the formation site, the unit's strength, and the date it ceased to exist as a separate unit, and Croatia now observes the formation day as Anti-Fascist Struggle Day. Official postwar Yugoslav historiography largely ignored the detachment, and its significance was reassessed only after Croatia became independent.
38th parallel
38선 (三八線), 38-я параллельThe 38th parallel was the line drawn near 38° north across Korea in August 1945, as the surrender of Japan approached, to divide Soviet and American occupation zones; the Soviet Union accepted it at once. It was generally understood as a temporary arrangement pending a trusteeship, but with the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea in 1948 it hardened into a de facto border. In June 1950 the Korean People's Army crossed it southward and the Korean War began, and the 1953 armistice made the Military Demarcation Line the new boundary, ending the parallel's function as the effective line of division. When and how the line was chosen, and whether any plan preceded it, remain disputed among sources.
4th of August Regime
Καθεστώς της 4ης ΑυγούστουThe 4th of August Regime (Greek: Kathestos tis 4is Avgoustou), also called the Metaxas regime, was the dictatorship under Ioannis Metaxas that ruled the Kingdom of Greece from 1936 to 1941, established on 4 August 1936 with King George II's support by suspending parliament and articles of the constitution. It combined anti-communism and ultranationalism with censorship and political repression, but unlike Italy or Germany kept its ties to Britain. Its classification is debated between a conventional authoritarian-conservative dictatorship and a regime with fascist features; it collapsed in April 1941 and was formally abolished by royal decree in February 1942.
500-Day Program
Программа «500 дней»An unadopted program for the transition of the Soviet planned economy to a market economy, drawn up in August and September 1990. Its Russian designation is the Shatalin-Yavlinsky program, commonly known as "500 days". The working group was formed on the initiative and joint decision of Gorbachev and Yeltsin; Shatalin proposed the plan and his working group finalized it, while sole authorship is often mistakenly attributed to Yavlinsky. Its core propositions were privatization of state property, decentralization of economic management, transition to free price formation, and favorable conditions for private entrepreneurship. The 500 days were divided into four stages. Ryzhkov's government offered the alternative "Main Directions of Development" and Gorbachev attempted a compromise, but it was not adopted. English-language usage calls it a "shock therapy" program.
5th Congress of the USSR Union of Cinematographers
V съезд кинематографистов СССРThe 5th Congress of the USSR Union of Cinematographers, held 13–15 May 1986 in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. Competitive delegate elections had already unseated much of the old leadership; after an overnight vote the entire old board was replaced and Elem Klimov was elected First Secretary, and Tengiz Abuladze's anti-Stalinist film Repentance was screened for the delegates. It is regarded as the effective end of film censorship and a watershed of cultural glasnost.
9+1 Joint Statement
Совместное заявление о безотлагательных мерах по стабилизации обстановки в стране и преодолению кризиса («9+1»)The 9+1 Joint Statement was a document signed on 23 April 1991 at Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow, by Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of nine Soviet republics (the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan), titled 'Joint Statement on Urgent Measures to Stabilize the Situation in the Country and Overcome the Crisis,' which launched the Novo-Ogaryovo process. It centered on restoring constitutional order, completing a new Union Treaty draft, and implementing joint anti-crisis economic measures, and by defining the Union center as an equal negotiating party in the '9+1' framework, it created the institutional foundation for a peaceful reconfiguration of the USSR. A moment of temporary compromise between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the divergent interpretations each brought to it became the inherent tension in all subsequent negotiations.