Page 69 - Mongolia & the Gobi Desert

In June 17, 1940, the Red Army occupied the whole territory of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,
and installed new, pro-Soviet governments in all three countries. Following elections, in
which only pro-communist candidates were allowed to run, the newly elected parliaments of
the three countries formally applied to join USSR in August 1940.

Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Although the Wehrmacht had
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of Stalingrad in 1943, which became the decisive turning point for Germany’s fortunes in
the war. The Soviets drove through Eastern Europe and captured Berlin before Germany
surrendered in 1945. During the war the Soviet Union lost more than 27 million citizens
(including eighteen million civilians).

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superpower. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe after the war, including the eastern half
of Germany. Stalin installed loyal communist governments in these satellite states.

The Soviet Union consolidated its hold on Eastern Europe. The United States helped the
Western European countries establish democracies, and both countries sought to achieve
economic, political, and ideological dominance over the Third World. The ensuing struggle
became known as the Cold War. Stalin died in early 1953 presumably without leaving any
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rule the Soviet Union jointly, but the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria appeared poised to
seize dictatorial control. General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and other leading politicians
organized an anti-Beria alliance and staged a coup d’état. Beria was arrested in June of 1953
and executed later that year; Khrushchev became the undisputed leader of the USSR.

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reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign
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when he began installing nuclear missiles in Cuba (after the United States installed Jupiter
missiles in Turkey which nearly provoked a war with the Soviet Union).

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued,
lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the pre-eminent
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development of the Soviet Union. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied
the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of
Brezhnev’s death in 1982 was one of aversion to change.

In the mid 1980s, the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He introduced the
landmark policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to
modernize Soviet communism. Glasnost meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech
that had characterized most of the Soviet Union’s existence were removed, and open political

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