X-Nico

45 unusual facts about Soviet Union


Andrey Kistyakovsky

Kistyakovsky's translations of William Faulkner, Robert Duncan, Charles Percy Snow, Flannery O'Connor and of some other authors were published in the former Soviet Union.

Anna Larina

In 1988, she gave a speech at a conference commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Bukharin’s birth given by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Communist Party Central Committee.

Bankole Timothy

He eventually became assistant editor of the Central Office of Information magazine, Commonwealth Today, and during this time he was invited to attend the Tashkent conference of African writers in the Soviet Union.

Canadian Tour 1983

After the album was released the Soviet concert administration put in effect interdiction to Sofia Rotaru to leave the Soviet Union for 5 consecutive years due to her increasing popularity in the West.

Center for Policy Studies

The center is committed to strengthening local capacity for critical policy analysis and pursues research and publication that is interdisciplinary and carried out with partners in the global policy community, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Center for Policy Studies (CPS) is an academic unit within Central European University, dedicated to improving the quality of governance in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union by the provision of independent public policy analysis and advice.

Chess theory

Kotov wrote that the Soviets had analyzed many opening variations "far into the end game".

Elizaveta Voronyanskaya

This work, a history of the Gulag prison camps, was ready for publication in New York and Paris by 1973 but Solzhenitsyn had wished for first publication in the Soviet Union.

Emil Gorovets

Rahmil "Emil" Yacovlevich Gorovets (in Russian Рахмиль Яковлевич Горовец) (born in Haisyn, Ukraine 10 June 1923 - died in New York on 17 August 2001) was a famous Soviet Ukrainian singer of Jewish origin, Gorovets standing for Horovitz in Russian.

Evald Okas

With the advent of World War II and the Soviet invasion and occupation of Estonia, he was subsequently mobilized into Soviet army, but, like many other Estonians, moved to work battalions in Kotlas, Russia.

Fedoseevtsy

There were small groups of the Fedoseevtsy in the Soviet Union, who had been moving away from religious intolerance and asceticism.

Ferdowsi Millenary Celebration

Simultaneously various official ceremonies were held in a number of European countries including France, Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union, in universities, clubs, and embassies.

Financial Services Volunteer Corps

FSVC was initially established to work in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union following the collapse of communism and the failure of centrally planned economies.

Fyodor Kulakov

In 1964 Kulakov was brought to Moscow to become the Head of the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee (CC).

Despite this widespread belief, in the prestige order voted by the Supreme Soviet in 1975, Kulakov was ranked seventh.

In 1971 he was elected to the Political Bureau (Politburo).

Greek Resistance

After the German invasion, the occupation of Athens and the fall of Crete, King George II and his government escaped to Egypt, where they proclaimed a government-in-exile, recognised by the Western Allies, but not yet by the Soviet Union, which was temporarily friendly to Nazi Germany after the signature of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Grigori Voitinsky

In 1920, the Soviet Union established the Far Eastern Bureau in Siberia, a branch of the Third Communist International, or the Comintern.

Harry A. Franck

He even traveled through the Soviet Union in 1935, not without difficulty, and recorded his impressions in A Vagabond in Sovietland (1935).

Head of Kalmykia

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, three people have served as Heads of the Republic.

Hector Hamilton

He became prominent in 1932 when the Soviet Union awarded him first prize alongside two Soviet architects for his design for the Palace of the Soviets in the second round of a public design competition, only to cancel the award without explanation a few months later.

Hero City

This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the individual distinction Hero of the Soviet Union.

However, in military terms, the battle was a great victory for the German Army and a disaster for the Soviets.

Hungarian neopaganism

These movements have roots in the ethnological studies of the early 20th century, later the elaboration of a national Hungarian religion was endorsed in the interwar Turanist circles (1930s-40s), and finally blossomed alongside other Pagan religions in Hungary since the fall of the Soviet Union.

ICCF U.S.A.

This was the Final Olympiad III team tourney in which the USSR was invited also to enter a team for the first time.

Joe and Monkey

Kvetchbot: a Soviet-created, sociopathic robot who awakens from deactivation to find that his Russian Communist masters are no longer in power.

Josef Špaček

Along with Dubček and other Central Committee members, Špaček was arrested by the Soviets during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (22 August 1968).

Joseph F. Holt

During a visit to the Soviet Union in 1955 Rep. Holt was held at gun point by a Soviet Army officer that demanded that he cease taking photographs of a church near Moscow.

Leopold Labedz

Leopold Labedz (22 January 1920 – 22 March 1993) was an anti-communist Anglo-Polish commentator on the Soviet Union.

Louise Reiss

The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground testing of nuclear weapons that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.

Mahabad

The republic received strong support from the Soviet Union, which occupied Iran during the same era and included the Kurdish towns of Bukan, Piranshahr, Sardasht and Oshnavieh.

Neighborhoods of Beersheba

It was built in the 1990s to house new immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Night of the Ducks

For example, Soviet media claimed that the mobilization was possibly "to divert the workers' attention and to allow the government to insert into the defense clause of the budget 420 million Lirot, more than the previous year".

Novodevichy Cemetery

Under Soviet rule, burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery was second in prestige only to burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Oddino Morgari

With Fascism and the March on Rome came a debate among socialists over the conflict and pacifism: in 1934, Morgari showed himself to be a partisan of an understanding with the Soviet Union, and called for defeatism to be applied as a revolutionary tactic in case Italy was to be led into war by Benito Mussolini.

Olumbe Bassir

He had performed very successful lecture tours in the then Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America among others.

Pioneer 2M

Pioneer 2M was a Soviet Union land speed record car built in 1961 under the guidance of I. Tichomirov.

Roger Matton

In 1966 the Montreal Symphony Orchestra included his Mouvement symphonique II in their concert repertoire for their 1966 tour of the Soviet Union, making it one of the first symphonic works by a Canadian composer to be performed in that nation.

Russian tube designations

Vacuum tubes produced in the former Soviet Union - and in present-day Russia - carry their own unique designations.

Soviet pro-Arab propaganda

During the Cold War era the Soviet Union used propaganda as one of their many overt tools to gain support on a global scale in the war waged against the United States.

Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) blamed the attack on 'Israeli Arabs'—this gives the attack legitimacy, presenting a 'partisan' resistance and placing the blame on unknown persons or on Israel itself.

Spiro Koleka

Koleka's background and experience as a technocrat allowed him to lead numerous economic and political delegations of the time towards many East European countries, including the Soviet Union.

The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000

As this book was written in the 1980s, some predictions for the near future were off - for example, the Soviet Union was predicted to exist as late as the year 2800.

Torgil von Seth

He served until 1941, a period which among other things saw the Young Swedes involving itself in the nation-wide efforts to help Finland after having been invaded by the Soviet Union.

Vagankovo Cemetery

It is the burial site for a number of people from the artistic and sports community of Russia and the old Soviet Union.


12 cm tornautomatpjäs m/70

Originally, Rb 08 anti-ship missile installations were seriously considered but abandoned, possibly because much of that project may have been exposed to the Soviet Union by Stig Wennerström, the spy who also leaked vital information about the air defense system STRIL 60.

1965 in India

18 September - Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin invites the leaders of India and Pakistan to meet in the Soviet Union to negotiate.

3027 Shavarsh

This is named after the Soviet-Armenian swimming Champion and hero Shavarsh Karapetyan, who saved over 20 people from a trolley that fell to the bottom of a lake.

7th Guards Cavalry Corps

The Corps was assigned to the Southwestern Front’s in the area of the 5th Tank Army (2nd formation) (Serafimovich) north of Stalingrad where it cooperated with the 1st Tank Corps (General V. V. Butkov) during Operation Uranus.

Adrian von Renteln

Theodor Adrian von Renteln (September 15, 1897 in Khodz, Georgia, then Russian Empire – 1946 in Soviet Union) was an activist and politician in Nazi Germany.

Aerolift

Aerolift was a South African airline based in Bryanston, Gauteng, Johannesburg, operating chartered passenger and cargo flights within Africa using Soviet-built aircraft.

Alexandru Mironov

Born in the Bessarabian locality of Vertujeni, now part of Moldova, Mironov was from a family which took refuge in southern Romania following the region's second occupation by the Soviet Union before the end of World War II.

Angolan War of Independence

The USA granted the company Aero Associates, from Tucson, Arizona, the permission to sell seven Douglas B-26 Invader bombers to Portugal in early 1965, despite Portugal's concerns about their support for the Marxists from Cuba and the USSR.

Anna Larina

Born in 1914, Anna Larina grew up amongst professional revolutionaries who stood at the head of the new Soviet Union.

Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street

New city administration preferred to keep the open area and installed the monument to Kliment Timiryazev (1923), one of the oldest extant monuments of Soviet age.

Center for Policy Studies

CPS has published several volumes of policy research, runs its own policy paper series and offers an on-line library of policy documents from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: the Policy Documentation Center.

Christa Tordy

She was assassinated along with her husband by the Soviet Red Army during its invasion of Germany during World War II.

Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia

The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (in Russian: Комитет Освобождения Народов России, abbreviated as КОНР, KONR) was a committee composed of military and civilian anticommunists from territories of the Soviet Union (most being Russians).

Dwijen Mukhopadhyay

As a member of ‘Indian Cultural Delegation’, he toured Soviet Union and East European countries like Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.

Eric Grinstead

In the late 1960s Lokesh Chandra invited Grinstead to catalogue a large collection of about 15,000 photographs and photocopies of Tangut Buddhist texts that had been acquired by his father, the famous Sanskrit scholar Raghu Vira (died 1963), during visits to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China during the 1950s.

Gōgen Yamaguchi

During his military tour in Manchuria in World War II, Gōgen was captured by the Soviet military in 1942 and incarcerated as a prisoner of war in a Russian concentration camp; it was here that he battled and defeated a live tiger according to his autobiography (cited above).

Greg Makowski

However, Makowski and his team mates were prevented from competing when President Carter boycotted the games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

He'll Have to Go

Elton John performed "He'll Have to Go" live on a number of occasions, perhaps most notably in 1979 on his acoustic tour with percussionist Ray Cooper, which included eight historic performances in the Soviet Union; a first for a Western rock artist.

History of Soviet espionage

Coming to power as a clandestine organization, having been schooled in the secret police tactics of the Czarist Okhrana the new Soviet government of the Soviet Union tended to overestimate the degree to which the other European powers of the day, especially the United Kingdom, were plotting its destruction.

Hotelicopter

It showed a craft based on the Soviet giant Mil V-12 military helicopter, leading millions to believe the world's first luxury hotel/helicopter was a reality.

Igor Savitsky

Thereafter, Savitsky began collecting the works of Central Asian artists, including Alexander Volkov, Ural Tansykbayev and Victor Ufimtsev of the Uzbek school, and later those of the Russian avant-garde – including Kliment Red'ko, Lyubov Popova, Mukhina, Ivan Koudriachov and Robert Falk – whose paintings, although already recognized in Western Europe (especially in France), had been banned in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s rule and through the 1960s.

Irine Sarishvili-Chanturia

Married to the prominent Georgian politician Giorgi Chanturia, she was a member of the National Democratic Party of Georgia (NDPG) and participated in several protest actions against Soviet rule in the late 1980s.

Ivan Ladyga

In April 1943, he was a senior aide to the chief of intelligence of the 18th Guards Rifle Corps of the 13th Army of the Central Front in the Battle of Kursk where he was involved in the defensive battles in the area west of Station Ponyri, the counterattack at Sevsk, Konotop, and Priluki.

John Crampton

The aircraft were tasked with flying deep level reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union to gather electronic and photographic intelligence.

Junibacken

The station also presents framed copies of Lindgren memorabilia, including a glowing letter of praise for Lindgren from then president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev.

Keston Institute

Later it broadened its purview to include formerly communist countries with its main concerns being the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.

Leonid Tsypkin

Leonid Borisovich Tsypkin (Леонид Борисович Цыпкин) (March 20, 1926 — March 20, 1982) was a Soviet writer and medical doctor, best known for his book Summer in Baden-Baden.

Lev Artsimovich

Lev Andreevich Artsimovich (Арцимович, Лев Андреевич in Russian; also transliterated Arzimowitsch) (February 25, 1909 (NS) – March 1, 1973) was a Soviet physicist, academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1953), member of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (since 1957), and Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).

Marie Carré

The memoir claimed that he was an undercover agent of the Soviet Union ordered to infiltrate the Catholic Church by becoming a priest and to put forth modernist ideas through a teaching position that would undermine the main teachings of the Church during the Second Vatican Council in subtle ways, by turn of phrase methods.

Marvelkind

There were multiple studios setup throughout the house and guests of the marvelkind included The Faint, Soviet, Assassins, Local H, Nash Kato and a number of other local bands and artists.

Michel Peissel

In 1988, having built a replica of a Viking long boat, Peissel and a crew of six rowed and sailed up the river Dvina and down the Dnieper 2400 km across the Soviet Union, from the Baltic to the Black Sea; an expedition meant to recreate that of the Varangians, the founding fathers of the Russian monarchy in the 8th century.

Mistel

As part of Operation Iron Hammer in late 1943 and early 1944, Mistels were selected to carry out key raids against Soviet weapons-manufacturing facilities—specifically, electricity-generating power stations around Moscow and Gorky.

Mohammed Daoud Khan

His ten-year tenure was noted for his foreign policy turn to the Soviet Union, the completion of the Helmand Valley project, which radically improved living conditions in southwestern Afghanistan, and tentative steps towards the emancipation of women.

Myrzakan Subanov

Myrzakan Usurkanovich Subanov (Kyrgyz and Russian: Мырзакан Усурканович Субанов; born 15 October 1944) is a Soviet and Kyrgyzstani military leader who served as post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan's chairman of the State Defense Committee in 1992-1993 and first Minister of Defense in 1993-1999.

Nito Alves

Alves favored stronger relations with the Soviet Union, which he wanted to grant military bases in Angola.

Olaf Rose

His dissertation, which was financially supported by the Clausewitz Society, explored the influence of Carl von Clausewitz as a military theorist in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Project 119

This marked the first time since the 1936 Summer Olympics that neither the United States, nor the Soviet Union/Russia, had won the most gold medals at a Summer Olympics.

Project 571

In the early morning of September 13, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Lin Liguo, and most of the other major plotters attempted to flee to the Soviet Union and boarded a prearranged Trident 1-E, (a CAAC B-256) piloted by Pan Jingyin, the deputy commander of the PLAAF 34th division.

Ray Danton

Danton played American agent Ralph Drake who is sent to Austria to meet with western agents from six Iron Curtain countries after it is revealed that the Soviet Union had named a new head of the secret police.

Tany Youne

Tany Youne (born Tatyana Stepanovna Maksimova-Koshkinsky; January 28, 1903; Cherby, Kazan province (now Yadrinsky District of Chuvash Republic) — October 6, 1977 Cheboksary, Chuvash ASSR) was a soviet actress and writer.

The Journalist

The second part ("Garden and Spring") tells about Aliabiev's life in Paris where he meets Annie Girardot, attends the rehearsal of Mireille Mathieu and conducts extensive discussions with his new friend, an American journalist, trying to persuade him in the advantages of Soviet way of life.

Type 64 pistol

Ever since the expulsion of the Kuomintang government, concluding the Chinese Civil War, the People's Liberation Army relied heavily upon support from the Soviet Union for supplies and weaponry.

Vasily Pronin

As a member of the Military Council of the Moscow Military District and Moscow Zone of Defense, Vasily Pronin together with the first secretary of the Moscow City Council and Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party Alexander Shcherbakov rendered great assistance to the State Defense Committee and Western Front command in organizing the defense of the capital in the fall and winter of 1941.

VI Queen Elisabeth Music Competition

The Soviet violin school couldn't attain a third victory after the successes of David Oistrakh in 1937 and Leonid Kogan in 1951 as Berl Senofsky managed to beat Julian Sitkovetsky.

Vietnamese people in Bulgaria

According to an international agreement of 1980, Bulgaria, along with other Comecon members such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, accepted Vietnamese guest workers in the country as a relatively cheaper manual labour workforce.

Vladislav Shoot

Born in Voznesensk, Soviet Union, he moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, settling on the artists' estate of Dartington Hall.

William Ward Pigman

William Ward Pigman (March 5, 1910 – September 30, 1977), also known as Ward Pigman, was a former chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).

World in Conflict: Soviet Assault

The game is set in an alternate 1989 in which the Politburo of the Soviet Union elects to take military action to sustain itself, rather than collapse.