Former USSR Culture Workshop

3. History Summary
Empire
  800s — Settled, organized by Vikings, called Rus' --> Russland --> Russia, Capital Kiev (Ukraine)
1000s — Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus'.
1300s — Capital Moscow. Mongol domination
1400s — Ivan III (the Great) first tsar and "Ruler of all Rus' "
1500s — Ivan IV (the Terrible), killed entire towns, enemies, son.
                 Brain disorder due to mercury therapy for arthritis.
                 Mongols raid Moscow, Code of Honor (if messanger killed)
1600s — Famine, Poles conquer Moscow, removed by Cossacks. Romanov Dynasty begins. Serfdom.
                 Church schism (raskol) by 20% dissenters Old Belief, sectarians. Old Slavonic abandoned.
                 Expansion to Black Sea, Pacific Ocean, China.
1700s — First newspaper. German settlers in South (Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholic, ... ).
                 Jews confined in Pale of Settlement (Ukraine).
1800s —  Caucasus conquered. Napoleon invaded, defeated. Peasant revolts. Serfdom abolished, but poor.
1900s — Trans-Siberian railway competed. War with Japan. First Duma (parliament). Religious freedom.
1905   — Bloody Sunday. Revolution.
1917   — October Revolution. End of tsars, Empire.
USSR
1900s — War with Poland. Famines. WWI
1918   — Tsar Nikolas and family killed
1922   — Stalin. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) established
1924   — Lenin dies.
1929   — End of religious freedom. Collectivization begins.
1930s — Internal passports started, still show nationality.
1940s — Battle of Stalingrad (Leningrad), WWII, Yalta Summit (Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt).
                 Red Army captures Berlin.  Anti-Western culture. First atomic bomb.
1950s — Sputnik (SPOOT-nik = satellite). Khrushchev visits US.
1960s — U-2 spy plane caught. Cosmonaut Yuriy Gagarin. Berlin Wall. Cuban missile crisis.
                 Volga Germans rehabilitated.
1970s — Jewish emigration begins. Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty)
                  Apollo/Soyuz space mission. Afghanistan war.
1980s — Summer Olympics in Moscow and boycotted by US, West. Chernobyl' disaster in North Ukraine.
                 Gorbachev, glastnost, perestropika, ...  Arzerbaidjan-Armenia war.  Afghanistan withdrawl.
1990s — Republics want independence. Economic chaos, inflation, privitization, mafias, ... Chechnia war.
Russian Federation
CIS - Confederation of Independent States
FSU - Former Soviet Union republics, Post Soviet states
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