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1991 Soviet Coup D'état Attempt
The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Coup,, "August Putsch". was a failed attempt by hardliners of the Soviet Union's Communist Party to forcibly seize control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party at the time. The coup leaders consisted of top military and civilian officials, including Vice President Gennady Yanayev, who together formed the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). They opposed Gorbachev's reform program, were angry at the loss of control over Eastern European states and fearful of the USSR's New Union Treaty which was on the verge of being signed. The treaty was to decentralize much of the central Soviet government's power and distribute it among its fifteen republics. The GKChP hardliners dispatched KGB agents, who detained Gorbachev at his holiday estate but failed to detain the recently elected president of a newly reconstituted Russia, Bor ...
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Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of othe ...
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Glasnost
''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, and so on. It has been used in Russian to mean "openness and transparency" since at least the end of the 18th century. In the Russian Empire of the late-19th century, the term was particularly associated with reforms of the judicial system. Among these were reforms permitting attendance of the press and the public at trials whose verdicts were now to be read aloud. Vladimir Lenin repeatedly emphasized the importance of glasnost as the most important feature of democracy. In the mid-1980s, it was popularised by Mikhail Gorbachev as a political slogan for increased government transparency in the Soviet Union. Historical usage Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva argues that the word ''glasnost'' has been in the Russian language for s ...
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Vympel
Directorate "V" of the FSB Special Purpose Center, often referred to as Spetsgruppa "V" Vympel ( pennant in Russian, originated from German , and having the same meaning), but also known as KGB Directorate "V", Vega Group, is an elite Russian special forces unit, under the command of the FSB. Vympel is the sister unit of Spetsgruppa "A" (Alpha Group), an FSB unit. Origins KUOS As most of the training in the KGB academy concentrated on plainclothes operational work focused on espionage and counter-espionage, in 1955 the First Chief Directorate of the service established the Development Courses for Officer Personnel ( (), Latinized abbreviation KUOS) – a training cadre with the purpose of training general duty KGB officers in irregular warfare and combat tactics for clandestine operations overseas or as a stay-behind cadre and backbone for the formation of partisan units in case of a foreign invasion. In 1966 these courses were taken out of the structure of the ...
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Alpha Group
Spetsgruppa "A", also known as Alpha Group (a popular English name), or Alfa, whose official name is Directorate "A" of the FSB Special Purpose Center (TsSN FSB) (Russian: Спецназ ФСБ "Альфа"), is an elite stand-alone sub-unit of Russia's special forces within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). It was created by the Soviet KGB in 1974. Although little is known about the exact nature of its primary directives, it is speculated that the unit is authorised to act under the direct control and sanction of Russia's top political leadership, similar to its sister unit, the Directorate "V" (Vympel), which is officially tasked with protecting Russia's strategic installations, as well as conducting black operations inside and outside Russia. It is also available for extended police duties, for paramilitary operations, and for covert operations, both domestically and internationally. In the Soviet Union Creation and organization On 28 July 1974, Alpha Group was ...
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Emblema KGB
Emblema may mean: * Emblema (motif), a central motif in a panel in a Greek or Roman mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ... * ''Emblema'' (bird), a genus of finches {{Disambiguation ...
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КПСС
" Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper = ''Pravda'' , position = Far-left , international = , religion = State Atheism , predecessor = Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP , successor = UCP–CPSU , youth_wing = Little OctobristsKomsomol , wing1 = Young Pioneers , wing1_title = Pioneer wing , affiliation1_title = , affiliation1 = Bloc of Communists and Non-Partisans (1936–1991) , membership = 19,487,822 (early 1989 ) , ideology = , colours = Red , country = the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),; abbreviated in Russian as or also known by various other names during its history, was the founding and ruling party of the Soviet Union ...
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4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division
The 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Order of Lenin Red Banner Tank Division named after Yuri Andropov (), commonly known as the Kantemirovites, the Kantemirovskaya Division or Kantemir Division, is a Guards armoured division of the Russian Ground Forces. It has the Military Unit Number 19612 and is one of the key formations of the Western Military District. All of its units, as well as headquarters, are based in the town of Naro-Fominsk, Moscow Oblast, south-west of Moscow. History World War II The direct ancestor of the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division was the Red Army's 17th Tank Corps, initially formed in Stalingrad in 1942 shortly after the 1941 start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. The 17th Tank Corps commenced its combat history on 26 June 1942, when it deployed to the west of Voronezh, just prior to the Battle of Voronezh. For distinction in combat during the Operation Little Saturn between 17 December and 30 December 1942, the 17 ...
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2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division
The 2nd Guards M. I. Kalinin Taman Motor Rifle Division (russian: 2-я гвардейская мотострелковая Таманская ордена Октябрьской Революции Краснознаменная ордена Суворова дивизия имени М. И. Калинина, translit=2-ya gvardeyskaya motostrelkovaya Tamanskaya ordena Oktyabr'skoy Revolyutsii Krasnoznamennaya ordena Suvorova diviziya imeni M. I. Kalinina), commonly known as the Tamanians or Taman Division, is a Guards mechanised infantry division of the Russian Ground Forces. Its Military Unit Number (V/Ch) is 23626. The 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division was formed in 1941, seeing extensive combat during World War II for which it became one of the most famous and decorated formations in the Soviet military. It was named in honor of Mikhail Kalinin and the town of Taman, remaining intact until it was disbanded in 2009, before being reformed in 2013. Since 2016, it is part of th ...
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President Of The Soviet Union
The president of the Soviet Union (russian: Президент Советского Союза, Prezident Sovetskogo Soyuza), officially the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (), abbreviated as president of the USSR (), was the head of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev was the only person to occupy this office. Gorbachev was also General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between March 1985 and August 1991. He derived an increasingly greater share of his power from his position as president until he finally resigned as General Secretary after the 1991 coup d'état attempt. Powers The presidency was an executive post, based on a mixture of the US and French presidencies. Prior to the creation of the post of president, the ''de jure'' head of state of the Soviet Union was the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, who was often called the "president" b ...
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Declaration Of Independence Of Ukraine
The Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine ( uk, Акт проголошення незалежності України, Akt proholoshennya nezalezhnosti Ukrayiny) was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR on 24 August 1991.A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples
by , University of Toronto Press, 2010, (page 722/723)
The Act reestabl ...
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Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the Baltic states; and is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of , with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts; and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population. After centuries of Teutonic, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule, which was mainly executed by the local Baltic German aristocracy, the independent ...
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Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,200 other islands and islets on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of . The capital city Tallinn and Tartu are the two largest urban areas of the country. The Estonian language is the autochthonous and the official language of Estonia; it is the first language of the majority of its population, as well as the world's second most spoken Finnic language. The land of what is now modern Estonia has been inhabited by '' Homo sapiens'' since at least 9,000 BC. The medieval indigenous population of Estonia was one of the last " pagan" civilisations in Europe to adopt Ch ...
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