Modern World Civilization

Topic: The Soviet Union: From Stalin to the Collapse of the Evil Empire

Handout Fourteen

 OUTLINE:

 XIV: The Soviet Union: From Stalin to the Collapse of the Evil Empire.

1. Stalin.
2. The Doctors’ Plot.
3. The Khrushchev Years.
4. Brezhnev Inc.
5. The War in Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Evil Empire.

 QUESTIONS: 

1. What was the Doctors’ Plot? What did Russia’s Jews fear?
2. The coming of N. S. Khrushchev ushered in a new era of American and Soviet relations? Why did the thaw fail during the Eisenhower presidency? What accounts for the Soviets to deploy missiles to Cuba?
3. When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, the Soviet Union had another ten years before the collapse of the Soviet state. What went wrong? What was the economic and social condition of the Soviet Union following Brezhnev’s death?
4. When M. S. Gorbachev came to power he attempted to create a climate for economic and political change in the Soviet Union. What was his rationale? Why did he fail? Did the Soviet-Afghan War contribute to the demise of the Soviet Union?

 TERMS: 

Doctors’ Plot                                        Glasnost

Solomon Mikhoels                                Chernobyl

Lavrenti Beria                                       Ceausescu

Bulganin                                               August Coup

N. S. Khrushchev                                 Able Archer

Malenkov                                           

Secret Speech

XX Party Congress

Virgin Lands

SALT

N. M. Taraki

40^th Army

Chernenko

Andropov

Perestroika