Concise Russian history for a traveler

Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

Through its denunciation of Stalin, it substantially destroyed the infallibility of the party. Successes in space exploration under his regime brought great applause for Russia. Khrushchev improved relations with the West, established a policy of peaceful coexistence that eventually led to the signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963. But he was at times eccentric and blunt, traits that sometimes negated his own diplomacy. But, despite all these, there was a cultural thaw under Khrushchev’s leadership, and Russian writers who had been suppressed began to publish again. Western ideas about democracy began to penetrate universities and academies.

After Khrushchev came Brezhnev. His strengths were in manipulating party and government cadres, but he was weak on policy ideas. The 1968 Prague Spring, an unprecedented period of free political expression in Czechoslovakia, led to the Warsaw pact invasion of that country in August, ruining any lasting hopes of radical economic reform. The U.S.S.R. had reached its apogee in the mid-1970s:  it  had  acquired  nuclear  parity  with

the United States and was recognized as a world superpower. There was unprecedented stability of cadres under Brezhnev, and the result was rampant corruption. Under Brezhnev the state gradually lost its monopoly on information control. A counter-culture, influenced by Western pop music, especially rock, spread rapidly. The widespread teaching of foreign languages further facilitated access to outside ideas. By the end of the Brezhnev era the Russian intelligentsia had rejected Communist Party values.

When Brezhnev died in 1982 the plight of the U.S.S.R. had reached crisis proportions. The Politburo was dominated by old men, and they were overwhelmingly Russian.