1961 in The Soviet Union

1961 In The Soviet Union

In the USSR, the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War; the ideological U.S.–USSR struggle for the planetary domination of their respective socio–economic systems, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Nonetheless, since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — an omnipotent General Secretary, anti-Trotskyism, a five-year planned economy (post-New Economic Policy), and repudiation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols — remained the character of Soviet society until the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the CPSU in 1985.

Read more about 1961 In The Soviet Union:  De-Stalinization and The Khrushchev Era

Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, soviet and/or union:

    Nothing an interested foreigner may have to say about the Soviet Union today can compare with the scorn and fury of those who inhabit the ruin of a dream.
    Christopher Hope (b. 1944)

    “Is there life on Mars?” “No, not there either.”
    —Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)

    Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
    The union of this ever-diverse pair!
    These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
    Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
    George Meredith (1828–1909)