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Haywood, William Dudley

(Encyclopedia)Haywood, William Dudley, 1869–1928, American labor leader, known as Big Bill Haywood, b. Salt Lake City, Utah. He began work as a miner at 15 years of age. In 1896 he joined the newly organized West...

Stakhanovism

(Encyclopedia)Stakhanovism stäkäˈnəvĭzm, stə– [key], movement begun (1935) in the Soviet Union aimed at increasing industrial production by the use of efficient working techniques. It was named for Aleksey ...

Warsaw Treaty Organization

(Encyclopedia)Warsaw Treaty Organization or Warsaw Pact, alliance set up under a mutual defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, in 1955 by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania,...

Russian Revolution

(Encyclopedia)Russian Revolution, violent upheaval in Russia in 1917 that overthrew the czarist government. The civil war between the Bolsheviks (Reds) and the anti-Bolsheviks (Whites) ravaged Russia until 1920. ...

politburo

(Encyclopedia)politburo, the former central policy-making and governing body of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and, with minor variations, of other Communist parties. It was first created on the eve of the...

U-2 incident

(Encyclopedia)U-2 incident, in U.S. and Soviet history, the events following the Soviet downing of an American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960. The incident led to the...

Communist party, in the United States

(Encyclopedia)Communist party, in the United States, political party that espoused the Marxist-Leninist principles of communism. In 1945, Browder's policy was attacked as being one of the “right deviationism,�...

Niyazov, Saparmurat

(Encyclopedia)Niyazov, Saparmurat säpärˈmo͞orätˌ nēyäˈzôf [key], 1940–2006, Soviet and Turkmen political leader, president of Turkmenistan (1991–2006). An engineer and member of the Communist party, h...

Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich

(Encyclopedia)Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich lĭsĕngˈkō, Rus. trəfēmˈ dyĭnyēˈsəvĭch lĭsyĕnˈkə [key], 1898–1976, Russian agronomist. As president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences ...

perestroika

(Encyclopedia)perestroika pərˈĕstroyˈkə [key], Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transfo...