Alexei KosyginAlexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин; – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980 and was one of the most influential Soviet policymakers in the mid-1960s along with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. 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 Red Army's demobilization in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager.
DissidentA dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union (and later Russia), Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Turkey, Iran, China, and Turkmenistan.
Socialism with a human faceSocialism with a human face (socialismus s lidskou tváří, socializmus s ľudskou tvárou) is a slogan referring to the reformist and democratic socialist programme of Alexander Dubček and his colleagues, agreed at the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1968, after he became chairman of the KSČ in January 1968. The first author of this slogan was Radovan Richta, and it was a process of moderate democratization, economic modernization, and political liberalization that sought to build an advanced and modern socialist society that valued democratic Czechoslovakian tradition while still allowing the Communist Party to continue governing.
Protests of 1968The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, which were predominantly characterized by popular rebellions against state militaries and bureaucracies. In the United States, the protests marked a turning point for the Civil Rights Movement, which produced revolutionary movements like the Black Panther Party. In reaction to the Tet Offensive, protests also sparked a broad movement in opposition to the Vietnam War all over the United States as well as in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.
