commulingo

Stalin's security chief who commanded SMERSH and ruled the MGB

Leader of South Yemen’s Socialist Party

Gorbachev's man for the Karabakh crisis who fled Baku as Black January consumed Soviet Azerbaijan

From heavy-water reactors to the world's largest accelerator: 23-year director of ITEP

Cheka founding member who guarded Lenin personally

Founder of Soviet Marxist philosophy, condemned as 'Menshevizing idealism'

The 'Papa Ioffe' who reared all of Soviet physics

Party leader of late Soviet Kyrgyzstan

A diplomat who widened room for negotiation amid East-West tension

Two-time presidential nominee who pressed the Soviet Union over its missiles in Cuba at the UN Security Council

The Central Rada formed in Kyiv in March 1917 began by seeking autonomy within a federal Russia and declared independence in January 1918, but over the next four years Kyiv changed hands more than ten...

The peace of Brest-Litovsk was a dictated settlement between a Soviet Russia whose army had melted away and an undefeated Germany. In the talks that opened in December 1917 three lines split the party...

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was an uprising against the Stalinist system, born of the hopes for de-Stalinization opened by Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. When student and worker protests in Budapest...

After Stalin’s death, Beria grew powerful as first deputy premier and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), driving reforms such as amnesties, early de-Stalinization, and a softer foreign li...

Hungary's post-war politics began at the Provisional National Assembly in Debrecen in December 1944 and took shape with the general election of 4 November 1945, in which the Smallholders won 57 per ce...

At the Kremlin talks of June 1953 the Soviet leaders condemned Rákosi's forced industrialization and mass repression and installed Imre Nagy as prime minister. The June resolution and the programme sp...

After taking Phnom Penh in 1975, the Khmer Rouge imposed forced urban evacuation, labor and food controls. Executions, persecution, hunger and disease caused massive loss of life.

When Japan surrendered in August 1945 the Viet Minh took power in the August Revolution and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September. France’s attempt at reconquest became war in D...

In December 1975 Laos abolished the monarchy and established the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Pathet Lao predominance displaced coalition government with a one-party state.

After reunification in 1975 Vietnam allied with the Soviet Union, drove out ethnic Chinese and at the end of 1978 invaded Cambodia, ruled by China’s Khmer Rouge allies. Just after visiting the United ...

The secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary, serving as the central instrument of Mátyás Rákosi's terror from 1945 to 1956. With 28,000 officers and 40,000 informants, it compiled dossiers o...

The change of course adopted by the Hungarian Working People's Party in June 1953 at the demand of the post-Stalin Soviet leadership and carried out by Imre Nagy's government (Hungarian: új szakasz). ...

The administrative register of farm households that Rákosi's Hungary classed as kulaks (rich peasants). A 1952 decree defined them broadly as holders of 25 cadastral holds (about 14 hectares) or more,...

The ruling party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956 (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja, MDP), formed when the Hungarian Communist Party absorbed the Social Democrats. Under Mátyás Rákosi it built one-party rule and St...

The productivity movement launched by the miner Stakhanov's record coal shift in 1935. It raised output norms by showering record-setters with pay and privileges, and was criticized for creating a pri...

Short for the 'Council of People's Commissars', the cabinet of the soviet government formed right after the October Revolution. Lenin was its first chairman, and it remained the formal government of t...

The doctrine that socialism could be completed in the Soviet Union alone, without the support of world revolution. Formulated by Stalin in late 1924 and given theoretical backing by Bukharin, it becam...

Trotsky's theory that a democratic revolution in a backward country must pass over into proletarian power, whose survival in turn depends on the revolution's international extension. Formulated out of...

The list of posts that could not be filled without party committee approval, and by extension the stratum of officials who filled them. Rule through appointment was the secretariat's key mechanism for...

The merchants, middlemen and small entrepreneurs who grew rich on the private trade legalized under the New Economic Policy. Inside the party they came to symbolize a capitalist revival, and they were...

Two Hungarian records of meetings in the Kremlin. On 13 and 16 June 1953 Malenkov, Beria, Molotov and others condemned Rákosi's one-man rule, over-rapid industrialisation and mass prosecutions, and na...

The complete 63 articles of the Directory's law on the formation of the army of 19 Fructidor Year VI (5 September 1798), which enrolled every Frenchman aged 20 to 25 in five annual conscription classe...

Full Korean translation, from the Russian, of the programme adopted by the first congress of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in January 1906: its view of one working class from industrial workers to...

Korean translation, from the Serbian originals, of the full texts of the resolution founding AVNOJ as the political representative body of the struggle at Bihać in November 1942, and of the Declaratio...

Korean translation of the full anti-militarist resolution of the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, August 1907, translated from the German text in the congress proceedings, including the ...

Korean translation of the full Basel Manifesto of November 1912, translated from the German text in the congress proceedings. It restated the Stuttgart and Copenhagen principles, assigned tasks to eac...

Korean translation of the full Erfurt Programme adopted by the SPD congress in October 1891: the statement of principles, ten political demands and five demands for the protection of workers, translat...

Korean translation of the full statement of reasons Karl Liebknecht handed to the Reichstag president after casting the only vote against the war credits on 2 December 1914, translated from the German...

The full text of the twelve-nation founding treaty signed in Washington in 1949: Article 4 on consultation when threatened, Article 5 treating an armed attack on one as an attack on all while leaving ...

Korean translation of all speech text reproduced on the French National Assembly website: Barnave’s defence of royal inviolability, separation of powers and ending the Revolution, 15 July 1791.

Trace the Revolution from the impact of the American War to Brumaire in 1799, connecting foreign war, the Terror, liberty, and equality. Each lesson also reads the period’s declarations, constitutions...