member_of_political_party iona yakir
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (  June 12 , 1937 ) was a leading Soviet ___MASK6___ leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937 . He commanded the Soviet Western Front in the Russo - Polish War of 1920  21 and served as chief of staff of the ___MASK52___ Army from 1925 through 1928 , as assistant in the People ' s Commissariat of Defense after 1934 and as commander of the Volga Military District in 1937 . He contributed to the modernization of Soviet armament and army force structure in the 1920s and 1930s and became instrumental in the development of aviation , mechanized , and airborne forces . As a theoretician , he was a driving force behind Soviet development of the theory of deep operations . The Soviet authorities accused him of treason and had him shot during the ___MASK6___ purges of 1937  38 , but rehabilitated his reputation in the 1960s . The title chief of staff identifies the leader of a complex organization , institution , or body of persons and it also may identify a principal staff officer ( PSO ), who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide - de - camp to an important individual , such as a president or a senior ___MASK6___ officer . Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian - associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate ___MASK6___ targets , mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war , and gives priority to warfare over non - combatant needs . The American - English Dictionary defines total war as " war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used , the territory or combatants involved , or the objectives pursued , especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded ." The ___MASK67___ , abbreviated in English as CPSU , was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR or Soviet Union ). The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 , when the Congress of People ' s Deputies modified the article of the constitution which granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system . The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks ( the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ), a revolutionary group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917 . The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup d ' état and was completely abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory . Throughout the history of the Soviet ___MASK38___ tens of millions of people became victims of political repression , which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution . Culminating during the Stalin era , it still existed during the " Khrushchev Thaw ", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Brezhnev stagnation , and didn ' t cease to exist during Mikhail Gorbachev ' s perestroika . Its ___MASK7___ still influences the life of modern Russia and other former Soviet states . The Cold War was a state of political and ___MASK6___ tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc ( the Soviet Union and its satellite states ) and powers in the Western Bloc ( the United States , its NATO allies and others ). Historians do not fully agree on the dates , but a common timeframe is the period ( the second half of the 20th century ) between 1947 , the year the Truman Doctrine ( a U . S . policy pledging to aid nations threatened by Soviet expansionism ) was announced , and 1991 , the year the Soviet Union collapsed . World War I ( WWI or WW1 ), also known as the First World War , or the Great War , was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918 . More than 70 million ___MASK6___ personnel , including 60 million Europeans , were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history . Over nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a result of the war ( including the victims of a number of genocides ), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents ' technological and industrial sophistication , and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare . It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history , and paved the way for major political changes , including revolutions in many of the nations involved . The Russian Civil War was a multi - party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917 , as many factions vied to determine Russia ' s political future . The two largest combatant groups were the ___MASK52___ Army , fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism , and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army , which included diverse interests favoring ___MASK12___ , capitalism and alternative forms of socialism , each with democratic and antidemocratic variants . In addition , rival militant socialists and nonideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites . Eight foreign nations intervened against the ___MASK52___ Army , notably the Allied Forces and the pro - German armies . The ___MASK52___ Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia in 1919 . The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920 . Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two more years , and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923 . Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934 . There were an estimated 7 , 000 , 000 - 12 , 000 , 000 casualties during the war , mostly civilians . The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen . The Soviet ___MASK38___ , officially the ___MASK38___ of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR " ) was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991 . A ___MASK38___ of multiple subnational republics , its government and economy were highly centralized . The Soviet ___MASK38___ was a one - party federation , governed by the ___MASK32___ with Moscow as its capital . ___MASK6___ personnel are members of the armed forces . Usually , personnel are divided into ___MASK6___ branches roughly defined by certain circumstances of their deployment . Those who serve in a typical large land force are soldiers , making up an army . Those who serve in seagoing forces are seamen or sailors , and their branch is a navy or coast guard . Marines serve in a marine corps . In the 20th century , the development of powered flight aircraft prompted the development of air forces , serviced by airmen . Designated leaders of ___MASK6___ personnel are officers . These include commissioned officers , warrant officers and non - commissioned officers ( NCOs ). For naval forces , non - commissioned officers are referred to as petty officers ( POs ). ___MASK6___ personnel are instructed to wear dog tags The Soviet Navy ( literally " ___MASK6___ Maritime Fleet of the USSR ") was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces . Often referred to as the ___MASK52___ Fleet , the Soviet Navy was a large part of the Soviet Union ' s strategic plan in the event of a conflict with the United States , the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ), or another conflict related to the Warsaw Pact . The influence of the Soviet Navy played a large role in the Cold War , as the majority of conflicts centered on naval forces . World War II ( often abbreviated to WWII or WW2 ), also known as the Second World War , was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945 , although related conflicts began earlier . It involved the vast majority of the world ' s nations  including all of the great powers  eventually forming two opposing ___MASK6___ alliances : the Allies and the Axis . It was the most widespread war in history , and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries . In a state of " total war ", the major participants threw their entire economic , industrial , and scientific capabilities behind the war effort , erasing the distinction between civilian and ___MASK6___ resources . Marked by mass deaths of civilians , including the Holocaust ( in which approximately 11 million people were killed ) and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres ( in which approximately one million were killed , and which included the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ), it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities . These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history . Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir ( Russian :    ; August 3 , 1896 -- June 12 , 1937 ) was a ___MASK52___ Army commander and one of the world ' s major military reformers between World War I and World War II . He was an early and major military victim of the Great Purge , alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky . He was rehabilitated in 1957 by Nikita Khrushchev . In general , a civilian is " a person who is not a member of the ___MASK6___ or of a police or firefighting force ", as defined by Merriam Webster ' s Dictionary . From the perspective of the U . S . Department of Defense , Chapter 18 of Title 10 United States Code refers to non - ___MASK6___ law enforcement officers as civilians since they are employees rather than enlisted personnel , and also in order to distinguish itself from ___MASK6___ police . In ___MASK6___ and law enforcement slang , the term " Civies " or " Civvies " are often used to refer civilian population or civilian clothing . The Soviet Armed Forces , also called the Armed Forces of the ___MASK38___ of Soviet Socialist Republics and Armed Forces of the Soviet ___MASK38___ ( Russian :       " Vooruzhonnyye Sily Soyuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik ",     ) refers to the armed forces of the Russian SFSR ( 1917  1922 ), and Soviet ___MASK38___ ( 1922  1991 ) from their beginnings in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War to its dissolution in December 1991 . Strategic bombing is a ___MASK6___ strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale or its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of ___MASK6___ operations , or both . It is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air which can utilize strategic bombers , long - or medium - range missiles , or nuclear - armed fighter - bomber aircraft to attack targets deemed vital to the enemy ' s war - making capability . Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin ( 18 December 1980 ) was a Soviet - Russian statesman during the Cold War . Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working - class family . He was conscripted into the labour army during the Russian Civil War , and after the ___MASK52___ Army ' s demobilisation in 1921 , he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager . Kosygin returned to Leningrad in the early 1930s and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy . During the Great Patriotic War ( World War II ), Kosygin was a member of the State Defence Committee and was tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German Army . He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry and later , the Minister of Light and Food Industry . Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo one year before his own death in 1953 , intentionally weakening Kosygin ' s position within the Soviet hierarchy . A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale . Great powers characteristically possess ___MASK6___ and economic strength , as well as diplomatic and soft power influence , which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers ' opinions before taking actions of their own . International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities , spatial aspects , and status dimensions . The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet ___MASK38___ which occurred from 1936 to 1938 . It involved a large - scale purge of the ___MASK32___ and government officials , repression of peasants and the Red Army leadership , and widespread police surveillance , suspicion of " saboteurs ", imprisonment , and arbitrary executions . In Russian historiography , the period of the most intense purge , 1937  1938 , is called Yezhovshchina ( literally , " Yezhov phenomenon ", commonly translated as " times of Yezhov " or " doings of Yezhov "), after Nikolai Yezhov , the head of the Soviet secret police , NKVD . It has been estimated between 600 , 000 and 3 million people died at the hands of the Soviet government during the Purge . Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev ( 19 December 1906  10 November 1982 ) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee ( CC ) of the ___MASK67___ ( CPSU ), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982 . His eighteen - year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in duration . During Brezhnev ' s rule , the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically , in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time . His tenure as leader was marked by the beginning of an era of economic and social stagnation in the Soviet Union . A ___MASK6___ ___MASK2___ is an international agreement concerning national security , when the contracting parties promise to support each other in case of a crisis that has not been identified in advance . Military alliances differ from coalitions , as coalitions are formed for a crisis that are already known . Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov (; May 1 , 1895  February 4 , 1940 ) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin . He was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938 , during the most deadly period of Stalin ' s Great Purge . His time in office is known as the "" Yezhovshchina "", a term coined during the de - Stalinization campaign of the 1950s . After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge , Yezhov became a victim of it himself . He was arrested , confessed under torture to a range of anti - Soviet activity , and was executed in 1940 . By the beginning of World War II , his status within the Soviet ___MASK38___ became that of a political unperson . In politics and ___MASK6___ planning , a war effort refers to a coordinated mobilization of society ' s resources  both industrial and human  towards the support of a ___MASK6___ force . Depending on the militarization of the culture , the relative size of the armed forces and the society supporting them , the style of government , and the popular support for the ___MASK6___ objectives , such war effort can range from a small industry to complete command of society . Russian Soviet Federative Socialist ___MASK39___ ( Russian SFSR or RSFSR ; ), commonly known as , was a sovereign state in 1917  22 and 1991 - 93 , the largest , most populous , and most economically developed ___MASK39___ of the Soviet ___MASK38___ in 1922  91 and a sovereign part of the Soviet ___MASK38___ with its own legislation in 1990  91 . The ___MASK39___ comprised sixteen autonomous republics , five autonomous oblasts , ten autonomous okrugs , six krais , and forty oblasts . Russians formed the largest ethnic group . The capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad , Novosibirsk , Yekaterinburg , Nizhny Novgorod and Samara . The ___MASK31___ , originally also Bolshevists or Bolsheviki ( derived from  " bol ' shinstvo ", " majority ", literally meaning " one of the majority ") were a faction of the Marxist ___MASK49___ ( RSDLP ) which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903 . The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk ( Belarus ) to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party . The Soviet space program comprised the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Soviet ___MASK38___ ( USSR ) from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991 . Over its sixty - year history , this primarily classified ___MASK6___ program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight , including the first intercontinental ballistic missile ( R - 7 ), first satellite ( Sputnik 1 ), first animal in Earth orbit ( the dog Laika on Sputnik 2 ), first human in space and Earth orbit ( cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 ), first woman in space and Earth orbit ( cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6 ), first spacewalk ( cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on Voskhod 2 ), first Moon impact ( Luna 2 ), first image of the far side of the moon ( Luna 3 ) and unmanned lunar soft landing ( Luna 9 ), first space rover ( Lunokhod 1 ), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth ( Luna 16 ), and first space station ( Salyut 1 ). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes : Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars , respectively , Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface , and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets . The Soviet Army is the name given to the main land - based branch of the Soviet Armed Forces between February 1946 and December 1991 , when it was replaced with the Russian Ground Forces , although it was not taken fully out of service until 25 December 1993 . Until 25 February 1946 , it was known as the ___MASK52___ Army , established by decree on 15 ( 28 ) January 1918 " to protect the population , territorial integrity and civil liberties in the territory of the Soviet state ." It had 2 . 4 million men under its service during the Cold War . The Workers ' and Peasants ' ___MASK52___ Army (: RKKA , frequently shortened in Russian to ; KA , in English : ___MASK52___ Army also in critical literature and folklore of that epoch - ___MASK52___ Horde , Army of Work ) was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution ( ___MASK52___ October or Bolshevik Revolution ). The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations ( especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army ) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War . Beginning in February 1946 , the ___MASK52___ Army , along with the Soviet Navy , embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces ; taking the official name of " Soviet Army ", until its dissolution in December 1991 . Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (  11 September 1971 ) was a politician who led the Soviet ___MASK38___ during part of the Cold War . He served as First Secretary of the ___MASK67___ from 1953 to 1964 , and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers , or Premier , from 1958 to 1964 . Khrushchev was responsible for the de - Stalinization of the Soviet ___MASK38___ , for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program , and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy . Khrushchev ' s party colleagues removed him from power in 1964 , replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier . The October Revolution , officially known in the Soviet literature as the Great October Socialist Revolution , and commonly referred to as ___MASK52___ October , the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution , was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917 . It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October ( 7 November , New Style ) 1917 . Deep operation also known as Soviet Deep Battle (" glubokaya operatsiya ") was a tenet that emphasized destroying , suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact , but throughout the depth of the battlefield . It was a ___MASK6___ theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s by Vladimir Triandafillov , an influential ___MASK6___ writer , who endeavoured to create a ___MASK6___ strategy with its own specialized operational art and tactics . The concept of deep operations was a national strategy , tailored to the economic , cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union . In the aftermath of several failures or defeats in the Russo - Japanese War , First World War and Polish  Soviet War , the Soviet High Command (" Stavka ") focused on developing new methods for the conduct of war . This new approach considered ___MASK6___ strategy and tactics , but also introduced a new intermediate level of ___MASK6___ art : operations . The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish the third level of ___MASK6___ thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics .