who were the russian leaders during the Cold war?
105483
Actually, since the Cold War started at the end of WWII, the leaders were:\nStalin\nKhrushchev\nBrezhnev\nAndropov\nChernenko\nGorbachev\nYesltsyn
984971
History of the Soviet Union  \n    Human beings have always demanded leadership; without it, society invariably heads toward self-destruction. But mankind has evolved over time, from a primal form of tribal leadership, to monarchy and dictatorship and finally, is on its tortuous path to the possibility of complete democracy. From the end of the Renaissance, the people have gradually awaken to the knowledge of human rights and a hatred of dictatorship, thus leading to bloody striving for independence. Such was the case of Russia, a nation rocked by many revolutions; a nation which, in stretching its arms toward economic superiority and political freedom, has sacrificed tens of millions of its people. In proud Russia’s turbulent history, it is demonstrated over and over again that, while the people may be repressed and scared into obedient silence for a while, they will rise, in order to defend their basic rights as human beings.\n\n \nBOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION  \n    Russia, near the end of the nineteenth century, was an impoverished state, miles and miles behind the other nations of Europe. At the beginning of the reign in 1894, Tsar Nicholas II, made an attempt at building factories and railways in order to boost Russia’s economy. Despite such vast economic progress and industrialization, the peasantry was far from satisfied. For, just as in any country new to industrialization, the government temporarily forgot its priority, in the rush to catch up to other more technologically advanced countries: its people. Ridiculously low wages, child labor and deplorable working conditions were wide spread, as trade unions were still outlawed. As the bridge between the poor and the rich widened, revolutionary sentiments began to grow.\n    From the masses, two revolutionary groups arose, both stemmed from the followers of Karl Marx, the Mensheviks, those who wanted wider popular support before launching any revolutionary movements, and the Bolsheviks, disciples of a particular interpretation of Marxism, who wanted radical change immediately. On January 22, 1905, 200,000 workers and their families gathered in front of the Czar palace to demand better “better working conditions, more personal freedom, and an elected national assembly.” The czar’s generals ordered their soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing as many as 1000 citizens, whose efforts only achieved little in terms of political change.\n    To complicate matters even further, in 1914, Czar Nicholas II made the fateful decision to launch Russia into The Great War, World War I, dragging with him Russia’s 11 million peasants. Russia’s economy was still growing, not yet mature, no where near able to handle the economic crisis that the war brought. The Germans crushed the Russian’s poorly equipped troops and inexperienced generals, as well as the soldiers’ morale. The czar had pushed his unstable economy and his unwilling people into World War I; he would indeed feel the consequences of his actions.\n \nMARCH REVOLUTION  \n    In March of 1917, a group of women textile workers led a riot against shortages of bread and fuel. The Tsar’s soldiers were ordered, once again, to fire into the crowd, but were convinced by some of the women to join their cause. Enthusiastic shouts of “down with the war!” and “down with the autocracy!” were heard all over. The Russian populace, after three centuries of oppressive rule, suddenly erupted with the “fever of the masses”; their sheer number and determination forced Nicholas to abdicate his throne. He and his family were placed under house arrest and shot a year later by the ultimately victorious Bolsheviks.\n    A provisional government (temporary government) headed by Alexander Kerensky replaced the dead czar regime as the people dared to look forward to a more secure future. But the provincial government decided to continue Russia’s involvement in the war, worsening internal conditioning. Kerensky gradually lost th
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Ronald Reagan\nGeorge Washington\nAbraham Lincoln\nMargaret Thatcher\nWinston Churchill\nCharles DeGaulle\nMikhail Gorbachev\nLenin\nStalin\nTony Blair\nGeorge Bush (sr and jr)\nSir John A MacDonald\nPierre Trudeau\nBrian Mulroney\nNikita Kruschev\nIndira Ghandi\nNeru\nNelson Mandela\nLech Walesa\nMussolini\nMao Tse Tung
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Josef Stalin.... who was the leader of the Soviet Union from mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), a position which had later become that of party leader.\n\nA hard-won victory in World War II (the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45), for which the Soviet Union was arguably unprepared, was made possible in part through the capacity for production that was the outcome of industrialization, as well as significant Lend-Lease gifts, primarily by the United States. In the postwar years, Stalin laid the groundwork for the formation of the Warsaw Pact and established the USSR as one of the two major world powers, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following his death in 1953.
429663
The cold war ended because the newly instated leader, gorbachev, started giving the satelite countries more freedoms and it steadily dissolved from there. That's at least a base for you. It's along those lines. George Bush was on better terms with him than before as well.
137426
Cold War: Postwar Estrangement\n1.The Western democracies and the Soviet Union discussed the progress of World War II and the nature of the postwar settlement at conferences in Tehran (1943), Yalta (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945). After the war, disputes between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, particularly over the Soviet takeover of East European states, led Winston Churchill to warn in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. For his part, Joseph Stalin deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur. \n\nThe Cold War was a period of East-West competition, tension, and conflict short of full-scale war, characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs. There were real wars, sometimes called "proxy wars" because they were fought by Soviet allies rather than the USSR itself -- along with competition for influence in the Third World, and a major superpower arms race. \n\nAfter Stalin's death, East-West relations went through phases of alternating relaxation and confrontation, including a cooperative phase during the 1960s and another, termed dtente, during the 1970s. A final phase during the late 1980s and early 1990s was hailed by President Mikhail Gorbachev, and especially by the president of the new post-Communist Russian republic, Boris Yeltsin, as well as by President George Bush, as beginning a partnership between the two states that could address many global problems. \n\n\n\nCold War: Soviet Perspectives\n2.After World War II, Joseph Stalin saw the world as divided into two camps: imperialist and capitalist regimes on the one hand, and the Communist and progressive world on the other. In 1947, President Harry Truman also spoke of two diametrically opposed systems: one free, and the other bent on subjugating other nations. \n\nAfter Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev stated in 1956 that imperialism and capitalism could coexist without war because the Communist system had become stronger. The Geneva Summit of 1955 among Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, and the Camp David Summit of 1959 between Eisenhower and Khrushchev raised hopes of a more cooperative spirit between East and West. In 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed some confidence-building agreements, and in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson met with Soviet Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey. Interspersed with such moves toward cooperation, however, were hostile acts that threatened broader conflict, such as the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968. \n\nThe long rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982) is now referred to in Russia as the "period of stagnation." But the Soviet stance toward the United States became less overtly hostile in the early 1970s. Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in summit meetings and the signing of strategic arms limitation agreements. Brezhnev proclaimed in 1973 that peaceful coexistence was the normal, permanent, and irreversible state of relations between imperialist and Communist countries, although he warned that conflict might continue in the Third World. In the late 1970s, growing internal repression and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to a renewal of Cold War hostility. \n\nSoviet views of the United States changed once again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in early 1985. Arms control negotiations were renewed, and President Reagan undertook a new series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that led to arms reductions and facilitated a growing sympathy even among Communist leaders for more cooperation and the rejection of a class-based, conflic
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The most powerful way that Gorbachev "ended" the Cold War was his decision not to use force to crush the independence movements in Eastern Europe and the other Soviet satellites, unlike many of his predecessor's. By refusing to send the Red Army to shore up the faltering support of the leaders of the Communist parties in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany as well as the Baltic States, he allowed 'people power' to peacefully overthrow them. This is in stark contrast to what happened when the Red Army was sent in to quell unrest in Romania less than a decade before that. Thus John Lewis Gaddis has said that Gorbachev was probably one of the most deserved winners of the Nobel Peace Prize - because he made a decision not to use force when it was an option that he could have exercised.
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Really just about every country on earth was involved in the Cold war. Either you were pro Soviet or pro West. Most countries were pro West unless they were part of the Soviet bloc or traded oil and weapons with the Soviets. Kind of like the war on terrorism. You are for us or against us.
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Yeltsin's derailment of Gorbachev's plan to form a loose soviet federation.  Look up the quotes from Gorbachev, last week.  It will give you plenty to write about (e..g., What if Gorby was successful?).
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Strasveetya!  You really need to study more about the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, its a very intereting time in history.  Most of the American movies, by the way, called the Soviet Union "Russia."  For many, many years our countries were the worst of enemies.  It started around the end of World War II, and officially ended when Yeltsin took power.  Why?  Because America believed communism to be the greatest evil, and the Soviet Union believed capitalism to be the greatest evil.  We were in a state that is known as a cold war.  A cold war is essentially a state of war, but at a constant state of cease-fire.  Some shots were fired, mainly planes shooting down other planes, but no major battles were fought between the two countries.  However, we had enough nuclear missiles pointed at each other to completely destroy all life on this planet several times over.  The Cold War was never more tense than when Khrushchev and Kennedy were presidents, and Khrushchev said on international television that the Soviet Union would crush America (taking off his shoe and pounding it for all to see while he said it).  I believe two of the greatest leaders our nations ever had were Gorbachev and Reagan.  They did much to clam things down, and both began the process of disarming our nuclear missiles.  Slava Bog!
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"Franklin Delano Roosevelt\nhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/fr32.html\nWinston Churchill\nhttp://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1\nJoseph Stalin\nhttp://gi.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_stalin.html\nMeet the "Big Three". These were the heads of the main allied countries who participated in the Yalta Conference in February of 1945. Yalta is a city on the coast of the Black Sea which was then part of the USSR and is now part of Ukraine. Their mission was to discuss post-war arrangements for Europe. Some of the agreements made at the conference included plans for dividing Germany into four zones of occupation (American, British, French, and Soviet), plans for war crimes trials, and plans for war reparations. Read some of the original documents pertaining to the conference."
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Alexander Kerensky. Hijacked Russian revolution. Set Russia back 80 years. He was a moderate, and would have allowed democracy to develop in a country where democracy had never flourished.
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To answer your questions in order:\n\nYes, the Soviet Union (which included Russia) was an ally of the US and the British.  The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also called the Soviet Union.  Russia was a part of the USSR, but wasn't called Russia then), led by Stalin, signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler (leader of Germany).  This was in force until Hitler broke it and invaded the Soviet Union.  Stalin was taken unawares and unprepared, so Hitler did well at first.  Stalin therefore allied with the British and the US to fight the Germans.  The "cold war" didn't start until after WWII During the jostling for control over the states freed from the Nazis. \n\n*****\n\nThe USSR and the Japanese didn't work together.  The war in Europe against Germany) ended sooner than that in Japan (May 8, 1945 for Germany’s surrender and August 15, 1945 for Japan’s) and the USSR was free to declare war on Japan, which it did.  This was one of the reasons that the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan.  It wanted to end the war before the Soviet Union forces entered the fighting, who would then stay and have control in that country and region.  \n\nAfter WWII Germany was divided into two halves, appropriately called West and East Germany.  The US, the United Kingdom (the British) and France controlled the West.  The Soviet Union controlled the East.  Germany was two different countries.  The US, UK and France set up a democracy in the West and then left (although the US left troops to guard against an attack from the Soviet Union, and many are still stationed there.  Now the bases are used as staging grounds for operations in the Afghanistan and Iraq).  The country they created was called the Federal Republic of Germany.\n\nThe Soviet Union established a country in the Eastern half, called the German Democratic Republic. This was not democratic though – it was communist.  The Soviet Union had many troops stationed there as well, and had a lot of influence in the Eastern half.  Vladimir Putin, the current President of the Russian Federation, worked in East Germany as a spy when he was part of the KGB (this isn’t a secret – he admits it freely and uses his excellent German in speeches).\n\n*****\nGermany played a very strong role in the War.  They were allied with Japan, but because they had some common enemies in their efforts to expand their territories.  In Europe, the war started when Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, claiming to be uniting the Germans who lived there (Austrians speak German and there were a lot of Germans in Czechoslovakia.  The moved there in the centuries that it belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Austrian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, which were all names used at different times to describe the same Empire ruled from the Austrian city of Vienna). At this point there was a lot of nervousness in Europe, as Hitler was using rhetoric such as “Germans need more land to live, which is their birthright.” But the British made a deal with Hitler that they would let him keep those countries if he didn’t go any further.  Hitler agreed, but he invaded Poland anyway, and kept going from there. He took France, Bombed England and wanted to invade, and moved through Eastern Europe.  He also invaded the USSR, as mentioned above.\n\nThe US at this point wasn’t involved.  Hitler made an alliance with the Japanese, who were engaged in their own war of expansion, because both were fighting the British and French (the British had a lot of Colonial holdings in the Pacific, and the French had some, too).  \n\nThe US became involved when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese wanted the US to withdraw from the pacific, but instead the US declared war on the Japanese.  The Japanese and the Germans were allied, so Germany declared war on the US, which then also entered the European war.  It was already helping the UK and the USSR with equipment and logistical support,
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Nobel Prize winners Solzhenitsyn (literature) and Sakharov (Peace). Alexandr Men (Orthodox priest). Vladimir Vernadskiy (scientist, one of the creators of "noosphere" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere)\nIn 1922 a shipload of leading Russian philosophers was sent from Russia (Berdyaev was just one of them. In Russian it was called "Философский пароход" - "philosopher's ship"). They were lucky, because most of those who stayed, perished in purges of the 30s.
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To some degree, the answer to your question depends on which side of the Iron Curtain you sided with.  Americans will blame the Russians (soviets) and Russians blame Americans.\n\nI think it is the US fear of communism and the policy of containment that started the Cold War.
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"Cold War" is an informal expression that, by its definition, does not refer to a period of armed conflict.  Therefore, there is no clear date on which it ended.  Historians typically choose dates that "seem best" to them in terms of saying when the period of US-Soviet confrontation came to an end.  Was it when Solidarity won Polish elections?  Was it when the Berlin Wall came down?  When the Romanians executed their dictator?  When the USSR became the CIS?  Some other event?  Those are dates you can find online, with a little effort.  Deciding which one was when the Cold War ended is going to be up to you.
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http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/russia/ivantheterrible.html\n\n Here is a link that should help you out.  Pay attention to the part that talks about the second part of his reign, when he did away with his advisors and ruled with complete autonomy. This should be what you are looking for.