IB History Regional Study 11: the USSR and Post-soviet Russia Key Definitions

The attempted seizure of power on 19 August 1991 by senior Soviet officials including the KGB chairman, defence minister, and interior minister, who placed Gorbachev under house arrest and announced a State Committee for the State of Emergency. The coup failed within 72 hours after Boris Yeltsin rallied public opposition and military units refused orders. Its failure accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was formally dissolved on 25 December 1991.

The political process initiated by Khrushchev after Stalin's death in 1953, involving the release of Gulag prisoners, rehabilitation of purge victims, partial relaxation of censorship (the Thaw), and the public denunciation of Stalin's crimes in the Secret Speech of February 1956. De-Stalinization had limits: Khrushchev maintained one-party rule and crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The term describes both specific policy changes and a broader shift in Soviet political culture away from mass terror.

The NKVD process used to screen Soviet citizens who had been in German-occupied territory or had been prisoners of war. Those returning from captivity were held in filtration camps where loyalty was assessed. Those classified as suspicious were sent to the Gulag, assigned penal labour, or prohibited from living in major cities. The filtration system reflected Stalin's view that capture by the enemy was equivalent to collaboration.

The 1965 Soviet economic reform introduced by Premier Alexei Kosygin. It abolished Khrushchev's regional councils (sovnarkhozy) and restored central ministries, while giving enterprise managers targets based on sales revenue and profit as well as gross output, and allowing enterprises to retain a share of profits for bonuses and investment. The reform was gradually undermined by conservative party officials and the structural distortions of the Soviet price system.

The Russian term for the former Soviet republics that became independent states in 1991. Russian foreign policy under Yeltsin and especially Putin regarded these states as a legitimate sphere of Russian influence and resisted their integration into Western political and military structures, particularly NATO. The concept has no basis in international law but has been used to justify Russian intervention in Georgia, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet states.

Russian term (from "sila," meaning force) for officials with backgrounds in the security services, military, or law enforcement who occupied senior positions in Putin's government and state enterprises. The siloviki represented a different power base from the Yeltsin-era oligarchs and were associated with the reassertion of state authority, re-nationalization of strategic industries, and a more confrontational foreign policy.

The world's first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. An 83.6 kg aluminium sphere, it orbited Earth every 96 minutes and could be tracked by radio worldwide. Its primary significance was strategic: the R-7 rocket that launched it was the world's first ICBM, demonstrating Soviet capability to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States. In the USA, Sputnik triggered the "Sputnik shock," leading to the creation of NASA in 1958 and a dramatic increase in science education funding.