Key Terms and Figures of the Soviet Union

Posted on Feb 26, 2025 in History

Key Terms

  • Kulak: Free capitalist farmers who owned their land. During the Stalin era, they were expropriated, and their owners were sentenced to the Gulag.
  • Bolshevik (Majority Party): Radical political group that emerged, led by Lenin, in 1905 within the Social Democratic Party (Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, etc.).
  • Soviets: Assemblies consisting of delegates elected by the workers, first emerging in 1905.
  • Spartacist League: Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during the last years of the First World War. They refused to cooperate with the authorities during WWI. After the war, they tried unsuccessfully to seize power, and its leaders were sentenced to death.
  • Third International: The world revolutionary party founded in 1919 with the aim of breaking with social democracy and establishing communist parties in all countries.
  • USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, created in 1922 as a federation of territories of the former Russian Empire, except Poland and Finland.
  • Collective Farm: State farms cultivated by farm employees on state-owned land in the Soviet Union.
  • Stakhanovite: Term derived from Alexei Stakhanov, a miner who marveled the Soviet authorities for his ability to extract more coal in less time than anyone. Stalin provided him as a model to be followed by all workers in the USSR.
  • Gosbank: Central bank of the Soviet Union.
  • Perestroika: Restructuring; a set of reforms in the Soviet Union implemented since 1985, following the guidelines of Mikhail Gorbachev.
  • Kolkhoz: Agricultural cooperatives of the former USSR.
  • Gosplan: Political office that gave the guidelines to be followed by the economy of the USSR. It was responsible for developing the Five-Year Plans.
  • Glasnost (Transparency): Package of reforms aimed at achieving greater transparency in the Soviet Union.
  • Agrogorod: Agricultural villages that were equipped with all sorts of industries and services. They were in effect during the 1950s.
  • Sovnarkhozes: Soviet organization created at the time of Khrushchev to achieve some economic autonomy. They were formed by members of communities that implemented the guidelines of Gosplan freely.
  • Destalinization: The process, started after the death of Stalin, which involved critiquing aspects of his period, such as the cult of personality and the concentration of power in one person.
  • Gulag: Soviet concentration camps (incorrectly located in Switzerland in the original text; Gulags were located throughout the Soviet Union, primarily in Siberia and other remote regions).

Key Figures

  • Lenin: Soviet Bolshevik leader who led the revolutions of 1917 and was the founder of the USSR and the Soviet Communist Party.
  • Stalin: Soviet leader in charge of Soviet industrialization. His period is characterized by repression of the population.
  • Trotsky: Russian revolutionary leader who organized the 1917 revolution with Lenin and the Red Army. His differences with Stalin on the scope of the revolution first brought about his exile and then his death in 1940.
  • Khrushchev: Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964. His period is characterized by a denunciation of the previous period, an attempt to modernize the country, and to maintain peaceful relations with the rest of the world.
  • Brezhnev: Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982. His period is characterized by a return to Stalinist orthodoxy, removing the reforms of his predecessor.
  • Gorbachev: Soviet leader from 1985 to 1991. His period is characterized by a set of economic measures undertaken to modernize the country and the attempt to achieve transparency of information. During his tenure, the USSR was dissolved.
  • Kerensky: He became prime minister in order to hold elections for a constituent assembly to reform the country.
  • Prince Lvov: Member of the Russian revolutionary leadership and of the Liberal Party, who served as prime minister from February to June 1917.