On March 11, 1990, Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to declare its independence from the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R.

Fitzpatrick, a doyenne of Soviet historians, offers the lay reader a concise, chronological account of the Soviet Union premised on the notion that accidents, rather than inevitabilities, drive human ...

It was one of the signature moments of the environmental movement, and one of the turning points of global history. A few long-haired men and women afloat in small rubber inflatables on an open ocean ...

The Soviet Union ceased to exist as a nation 30 years ago today. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union. The Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered ...

The often misunderstood history of the Soviet dissident movement. In To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, historian Benjamin Nathans sheds light on how the protest movement reinvented itself at key ...

On March 5, 1953, the Soviet Union faced a massive shift in power. Joseph Stalin, the leader who had ruled the nation since 1924, died in ...

Reason's December special issue marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This story is part of our exploration of the global legacy of that evil empire, and our effort to be ...

Here's the standard high school history class summary of the Soviet Union: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a communist state from 1922 to 1991 and was a big rival of the US from ...

A new book explores the legacy of the Soviet Union’s human spaceflight program Diane Tedeschi Yuri Gagarin’s status as an icon is evident in Russia’s many memorials for the pioneering cosmonaut, ...

The Cold War and its effects. Remarks delivered at the Jordan Center Workshop, New York University, November 1, 2024. My current reading of what Russia has become is based on my own experiences as an ...

Sixty-two years ago today, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere into space. The achievement rocked the world, not only sending ...

In 1971, the United States launched a secret satellite program called JUMPSEAT, which surveilled the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. Before, during, and after the Cold War reconnaissance ...