Prague SpringThe Prague Spring (Pražské jaro, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and most Warsaw Pact members invaded the country to suppress the reforms. The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization.
Nikita KhrushchevInfobox officeholder | name = Nikita Khrushchev | native_name = | native_name_lang = ru | image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B0628-0015-035, Nikita S. Chruschtschow.
Nicolae CeaușescuNicolae Ceaușescu (tʃaʊˈʃɛskuː , nikoˈla.e tʃe̯a.uˈʃesku; – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and statesman. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last communist leader of Romania. He was also the country's head of state from 1967, serving as President of the State Council and from 1974 concurrently as President of the Republic, until his overthrow and execution in the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, part of a series of anti-Communist uprisings in Eastern Europe that year.
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (PCIA) (Narodný komissariat vnutrennih del (NKVD), nɐˈrod.nɨj kə.mjɪ.sə.rjɪˈat ˈvnut.rjɪ.njɪx̬ djel), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934.
Sino-Soviet splitThe Sino-Soviet split was the breaking of political relations between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese founding father Mao Zedong decried as revisionism.