In early August 2008, after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into the rebellious province of South Ossetia, Russia came to its defense, beginning a five-day-long conflict that ended with Russian troops within striking distance of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. ...read more
Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin had a weird relationship. There was the time the Russian president gave the U.S. president a pair of hockey jerseys that said “Yeltsin 96” and “Clinton 96.” There was also the time Clinton doubled over laughing when Yeltsin called the U.S. press “a ...read more
The Great Purge, also known as the “Great Terror,” was a brutal political campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he considered a threat. Although estimates vary, most experts believe at least 750,000 ...read more
The Romanov family was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia. They first came to power in 1613, and over the next three centuries, 18 Romanovs took the Russian throne, including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I and Nicholas II. During the Russian Revolution ...read more
Leon Trotsky awaited the inevitable as he fed his rabbits on the afternoon of August 20, 1940. Marked for death by Joseph Stalin, the 60-year-old intellectual architect of the Russian Revolution knew that neither the armed guards patrolling the high walls of his Mexico City ...read more
In Russia, the revolution of 1905 begins when czarist troops open fire on a peaceful group of workers marching to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to petition their grievances to Czar Nicholas II. Some 500 protestors were massacred on “Bloody Sunday,” setting off months of ...read more
Soviet scientist and well-known human rights activist Andrei Sakharov begins a two-week visit to the United States. During his visit, he pleaded with the American government and people to support Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (political openness) and ...read more