Answer: Yuri Andropov Samantha Smith wrote to Yuri Andropov shortly after he took power in November 1982. She asked the Soviet leader to do everything he could to prevent a nuclear war. In April 1983, Andropov sent a positive, if slightly condescending, reply to Smith, ensuring her that ...
MOSCOW (AP) — Mikhail Gorbachev, who as the last leader of the Soviet Union waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire but produced extraordinary reforms that led to the end of the Cold War, died Tuesday. He was 91. The Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement that Gorbache...
General Semyon IvanovrecalledKhrushchev’s activities during the battles for Stalingrad: “This rather short, slightly overweight man with a simple smile always remained, if I may say so, a stabilizer of the situation within the circle of commanders who led the troops in the Battle of Stalingrad....
MOSCOW (AP) — Mikhail Gorbachev, who set out to revitalize the Soviet Union but ended up unleashing forces that led to the collapse of communism, the breakup of the state and the end of the Cold War, died Tuesday. The last Soviet leader was 91. The Central Clinical Hospital said...
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and was succeeded by two other geriatric leaders: Yuri Andropov, Gorbachev’s mentor, and Konstantin Chernenko. It wasn’t until March 1985, when Chernenko died, that the party finally chose a younger man to lead the country: Gorbachev. He was...