Russian Final

Front 1

Tripartite Pact

Back 1

This was an extension of the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936. This 1940 agreement essentially made Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan allies.

Front 2

Operation Barbarossa

Back 2

This was the code name for Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Front 3

Georgi Zhukov

Back 3

This man was a general in the Soviet Union’s Red Army. More so than anyone else, he was the architect of the ultimate Soviet victory against Nazi Germany during World War II.

Front 4

T-34 Tank

Back 4

This was the principal Soviet battle tank during World War II. It had a powerful 76-millimeter gun and thick armor that made it impenetrable to any German tank round. The Germans had no idea the tank existed until they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941

Front 5

Lend-Lease Program

Back 5

This program was created by an act of the United States Congress in 1941 that gave the president the authority to lend or lease arms to Great Britain and the Soviet Union with payments deferred until after the war. Under this program, the Soviet Union received valuable supplies from the United States, especially trucks for the Red Army.

Front 6

Battle of Kursk

Back 6

This battle in the summer of 1943 was the final German offensive against the Red Army. The Red Army had advanced warning of the German plans, and the Soviet forces prevented the Germans from incapacitating the Red Army. It was the final major battle on the Eastern Front.

Front 7

Tehran Conference

Back 7

This was a conference held between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill, and Joseph Stalin in November 1943 in the Iranian city of Teheran. It was decided at this conference that the United States and Britain would conduct a cross-channel invasion of France in 1944. Britain and the United States also agreed to give part of Poland to a new Belorussia and to Ukraine.

Front 8

Yalta Conference

Back 8

This was the third major wartime conference between the Allies and the Soviet Union. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met at this Black Sea resort and decided that the Soviet Union would assist in the war against Japan within sixty days after the end of the war in Europe. German occupation zones were also decided upon

Front 9

Potsdam Conference

Back 9

This was the last of the coordinating conferences between the Big Three—the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—in July 1945. Its purpose was to develop a final set of policies for the occupation of Germany, which included deciding reparations for the Soviet Union. The Big Three also insisted upon unconditional surrender on the part of Japan.

Front 10

Iron Curtain

Back 10

This is a term coined by Winston Churchill that referred to the division of Europe between those free and democratic countries in West Europe and those under Soviet domination in East Europe.

Front 11

NATO

Back 11

This stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was a collective security arrangement created in 1949 that included the United States and most West European countries, and its purpose was to prevent Soviet expansion. West Germany joined in 1955.

Front 12

Marshall Plan

Back 12

This was a plan initiated by the United States in 1947 that pumped billions of dollars into West European countries in order to help them rebuild from the damage caused by World War II and to prevent the rise of communist party movements in West European countries

Front 13

COMECON

Back 13

This was the Soviet Union’s response to the Marshall Plan in 1947 and later to the creation of the European Economic Community. It was a forced integration of the Soviet Union’s satellite countries into a single economic bloc

Front 14

German Democratic Republic

Back 14

Commonly called East Germany, this was the official name of the Soviet satellite state created from the Soviet occupation zone that was established after World War II.

Front 15

Truman Doctrine

Back 15

This was a doctrine annunciated by President Harry S Truman that stated the United States would do whatever was necessary to contain communism to those areas where it already existed

Front 16

Josip Broz Tito

Back 16

This man was a Serbian who lead a communist insurgency against the Nazi German occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II. He led Yugoslavia afterward until his death in 1980, and he conducted the affairs of his country very independently from the Soviet Union.

Front 17

Nikita Khrushchev

Back 17

This man became the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death in 1953 and remained in this post until his ouster in 1964.

Front 18

Collective Leadership

Back 18

This was a term used by Soviet leaders after Stalin’s death in 1953. It indicated more diffuse leadership by many people rather than a single, all-powerful dictator as had existed under three decades of Stalin’s rule

Front 19

Jewish Doctors' Plot

Back 19

This was an attempt in 1953 by Stalin to implicate nine Jewish doctors in an assassination attempt on one of his henchmen in Leningrad in order to justify mass deportations of Jews to Siberia. The Jewish doctors were falsely accused of working for the American CIA. It was evidence of how unbalanced and suspicious Stalin had become in his later years.

Front 20

Committee of State Security

Back 20

Known more commonly by its abbreviation, KGB, this was created by Khrushchev in the 1950s so that the internal security apparatus of the Soviet Union was under the control of the Communist Party and not a single, dangerous individual as it had been under Beria.

Front 21

Great Leap Forward

Back 21

This was Mao Tse-Tung’s plan to surpass the Soviet Union in production and assume the leadership of the communist world. However, Mao’s plan faltered due to poor planning.

Front 22

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Back 22

This Russian author was allowed by Khrushchev to publish his famous work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. This worked described the grim conditions in Stalin’s work camps in the 1930s and 1940s. It led to greater demands for intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Front 23

Corn Campaign

Back 23

This was an agricultural initiative started by Khrushchev to raise more corn in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the Soviet Union lacked the proper soil and climate for corn, and agricultural output plummeted as a result.

Front 24

Prague Spring

Back 24

This was an attempt in 1968 by the Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek to initiate a series of liberalizing reforms that would allow for more political freedom and limited capitalist reforms. However, this movement was ultimately suppressed by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.

Front 25

Brezhnev Doctrine

Back 25

This was a doctrine annunciated by Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the reforms of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring. This doctrine said that the Soviet Union had a right and obligation to invade any communist country whose government was in danger of collapse or overthrow in order to preserve it.

Front 26

Detente

Back 26

This was a policy pursued by Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s that sought to lessen tensions with the United States. This included the SALT I Treaty (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) in 1972, which banned anti-ballistic missiles.

Front 27

Helsinki Accords

Back 27

This was an agreement signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1975 that recognized the existing borders of Europe that had been established after 1945. It also had a section called the “third basket” which allowed for freedom of speech, freedom of travel, and other basic human rights. This increased the rise of dissent in the Soviet Union.

Front 28

Perestroika

Back 28

This means “restructuring” in Russia, and it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s plan to end the inefficiencies in the Soviet centralized economy by decentralizing decision making, letting obsolete facilities close, and making the Soviet economy more reliant upon the forces of supply and demand.

Front 29

Glasnost

Back 29

This means “openness” in Russian and it was Mikhail Gorbechev’s plan to bring about more openness and freedom to Soviet society.