Glossary — CommuLingo

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23–29 April 1929 Party and state

16th Party Conference of the VKP(b) (April 1929)

The 16th All-Union Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), held in Moscow from 23 to 29 April 1929. 254 voting delegates and 679 consultative delegates attended. The central agenda item was the adoption of the First Five-Year Plan, reported by Alexei Rykov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, and Valerian Kuibyshev. The conference approved the 'optimal' variant of the plan and officially condemned the Right Opposition.

February–May 1922 Repression and law

1922 Confiscation of Church Valuables

изъятие церковных ценностей 1922 года

From 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.

December 1936–October 1977 Party and state

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–present Korean political economy

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. Politically characterized by the institutionalization of direct presidential elections and formal democracy; economically by neoliberal market opening and the continuation of chaebol-led growth; in labor by an enterprise-union system and militant economism. After the 1997 IMF crisis, the regime deepened labor-market flexibilization, non-regular employment, and intra-working-class inequality, becoming the subject of sustained crisis discourse.

1988–1991 Economy and planning

1988 Law on Cooperatives

Закон СССР «О кооперации в СССР»

Adopted by the USSR Supreme Soviet on 26 May 1988, this law granted legal status to private enterprise and wage labor for the first time since the end of NEP. It authorized the creation of production and consumer cooperatives, gave them autonomy over pricing and wages, and opened channels for de facto private capital accumulation through transactions with state enterprises and bank credit. The most radical legislative act of perestroika's economic reforms, it spawned tens of thousands of cooperatives and the Soviet Union's first 'perestroika millionaires.'

28 June – 1 July 1988 Party and state

19th All-Union Party Conference (1988)

XIX Всесоюзная партийная конференция КПСС

A Communist Party conference held in Moscow from 28 June to 1 July 1988, where Mikhail Gorbachev pushed through a radical political reform agenda. The conference adopted resolutions on democratization of Soviet society and reform of the political system, creating the Congress of People's Deputies, introducing multi-candidate elections with secret ballots, and separating party organs from state organs. A dramatic televised confrontation between Boris Yeltsin, who criticized elite privileges and asked for political rehabilitation, and Yegor Ligachev, who cut him off with 'Boris, you are wrong,' riveted the nation; the resolutions led to the December 1988 constitutional reform and the Soviet Union's first competitive elections in spring 1989.

1941 International movement

1st Sisak Partisan Detachment

1. Sisački partizanski odred

The 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment was the first organized Partisan armed anti-fascist resistance unit formed in occupied Yugoslavia. The outlawed Communist Party of Croatia formed it in Brezovica Forest near Sisak on 22 June 1941, after which it began armed resistance through railway sabotage and attacks on occupation forces.

1945–1953 Korean political economy

38th parallel

38선 (三八線), 38-я параллель

The 38th parallel was a dividing line hastily drawn across the Korean peninsula in August 1945 by two U.S. Army officers using a National Geographic map, with no expert consultation and no prior plan. Accepted by the Soviet Union, it became the boundary between Soviet and American occupation zones, and with the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea in 1948 it hardened into a de facto border. When the Korean People's Army crossed it southward in June 1950 the Korean War began; the 1953 armistice replaced it with the Military Demarcation Line, ending its role as the effective dividing line.

1990 Economy and planning

500-Day Program

Программа «500 дней»

A radical market transition plan for the Soviet Union drafted in 1990 under the leadership of Stanislav Shatalin and Grigory Yavlinsky. Formed by joint agreement of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the program envisioned transferring state assets to citizens through phased mass privatization, price liberalization, and external economic opening within 500 days. Though initially backed by Gorbachev, it collided with Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov's gradualist alternative and was never adopted at the Union level; it was partially implemented in the Russian Republic and laid the intellectual groundwork for Gaidar's shock therapy.

13–15 May 1986 Culture and education

5th Congress of the USSR Union of Cinematographers

V съезд кинематографистов СССР

The 5th Congress of the USSR Union of Cinematographers, held 13–15 May 1986 at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. Tengiz Abuladze's anti-Stalinist film Repentance was screened with Alexander Yakovlev's authorization, the entire old-guard leadership was voted out, and Elem Klimov was elected First Secretary, marking a watershed of cultural glasnost that effectively ended film censorship in the Soviet Union.

1991 Party and state

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.