1.
Soviet Navy
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The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. The influence of the Soviet Navy played a role in the Cold War. The Soviet Navy was divided into four major fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea, the Caspian Flotilla was a smaller force operating in the land-locked Caspian Sea. Main components of the Soviet Navy included Soviet Naval Aviation, Naval Infantry, most of the Soviet Navy was reformed into the Russian Navy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, while some elements became the basis of the Ukrainian, Azerbaijani and Georgian navies. During the revolution, sailors deserted their ships at will and generally neglected their duties, the officers were dispersed and most of the sailors left their ships. Work stopped in the shipyards, where uncompleted ships deteriorated rapidly, the Black Sea Fleet fared no better than the Baltic. The Bolshevik revolution entirely disrupted its personnel, with murders of officers. At the end of April 1918, German troops entered Crimea, the more effective ships were moved from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk where, after an ultimatum from Germany, they were scuttled by Vladimir Lenins order. The ships remaining in Sevastopol were captured by the Germans and then, after November 1918, on 1 April 1919, when Red Army forces captured Crimea, the British squadron had to withdraw, but before leaving they damaged all the remaining battleships and sank thirteen new submarines. When the White Army captured Crimea in 1919, it rescued and reconditioned a few units, at the end of the civil war, Wrangels fleet, a White fleet, moved to Bizerta in French Tunisia, where it was interned. The first ship of the navy could be considered the rebellious Imperial Russian cruiser Aurora. Sailors of the Baltic fleet supplied the fighting force of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution, some imperial vessels continued to serve after the revolution, albeit with different names. The Soviet Navy, established as the Workers and Peasants Red Fleet by a 1918 decree of the Soviet government, was less than service-ready during the interwar years, as the countrys attentions were largely directed internally, the Navy did not have much funding or training. The greater part of the old fleet was sold by the Soviet government to Germany for scrap, in the Baltic Sea there remained only three much-neglected battleships, two cruisers, some ten destroyers, and a few submarines. Despite this state of affairs, the Baltic Fleet remained a significant naval formation, there also existed some thirty minor-waterways combat flotillas. During the 1930s, as the industrialization of the Soviet Union proceeded, approved by the Labour and Defence Council in 1926, the Naval Shipbuilding Program included plans to construct twelve submarines, the first six were to become known as the Dekabrist class. Beginning 4 November 1926, Technical Bureau Nº4, under the leadership of B. M, malinin, managed the submarine construction works at the Baltic Shipyard. In subsequent years,133 submarines were built to designs developed during Malinins management, additional developments included the formation of the Pacific Fleet in 1932 and the Northern Fleet in 1933
2.
People's Liberation Army Navy
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The PLAN can trace its lineage to naval units fighting during the Chinese Civil War and was established in September 1950. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the Soviet Union provided assistance to the PLAN in the form of advisers and export of equipment. Until the late 1980s, the PLAN was largely a riverine and this led to the development of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy into a green-water navy by 2009. Before the 1990s the PLAN had traditionally played a role to the Peoples Liberation Army Ground Force. In 2008, General Qian Lihua confirmed that China plans to operate a fleet of aircraft carriers in the near future. As of 2013 PLA officials have also outlined plans to operate in the first, Chinese strategists term the development of the PLAN from a green-water navy into a regional blue-water defensive and offensive navy. The PLAN traces its lineage to units of the Republic of China Navy who defected to the Peoples Liberation Army towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, in 1949, Mao Zedong asserted that to oppose imperialist aggression, we must build a powerful navy. During the Landing Operation on Hainan Island, the used wooden junks fitted with mountain guns as both transport and warships against the Republic of China Navy. The Naval Academy was set up at Dalian on 22 November 1949, the navy was established in September 1950 by consolidating regional naval forces under Joint Staff Department command in Jiangyan, now in Taizhou, Jiangsu province. It then consisted of a collection of ships and boats acquired from the Kuomintang forces. The Naval Air Force was added two years later, by 1954 an estimated 2,500 Soviet naval advisers were in China—possibly one adviser to every thirty Chinese naval personnel—and the Soviet Union began providing modern ships. In shipbuilding the Soviets first assisted the Chinese, then the Chinese copied Soviet designs without assistance, eventually Soviet assistance progressed to the point that a joint Sino-Soviet Pacific Ocean fleet was under discussion. Through the upheavals of the late 1950s and 1960s the Navy remained relatively undisturbed, under the leadership of Minister of National Defense Lin Biao, large investments were made in naval construction during the frugal years immediately after the Great Leap Forward. In the 1970s, when approximately 20 percent of the budget was allocated to naval forces. The Navy also began development of attack submarines and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. In the 1980s, under the leadership of Chief Naval Commander Liu Huaqing, Liu Huaqing was an Army Officer who spent most of his career in administrative positions involving science and technology. It was not until 1988 that the Peoples Liberation Army Navy was led by a Naval Officer, Liu was also very close to Deng Xiaoping as his modernization efforts were very much in keeping with Dengs national policies. While under his leadership Naval construction yards produced fewer ships than the 1970s, greater emphasis was placed on technology, in 1982 the navy conducted a successful test of an underwater-launched ballistic missile
3.
Ballistic missile submarine
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A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. These submarines became a weapon system in the Cold War because of their nuclear deterrence capability. Their deployment has been dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union / Russia, with numbers in service with France, the United Kingdom, China. This submarine launched the worlds first SLBM, an R-11FM on 16 September 1955, five additional Project V611 and AV611 submarines became the worlds first operational SSBs with two R-11FM missiles each, entering service in 1956-57. They were followed by a series of 23 specifically designed Project 629 SSBs completed 1958-62, the Polaris missile and the first US SSBNs were developed by a Special Project office under Rear Admiral W. F. Red Raborn, appointed by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke, George Washington was redesigned and rebuilt early in construction from a Skipjack-class fast attack submarine, USS Scorpion, with a 130 ft missile compartment welded into the middle. Nuclear power was an advance, allowing a ballistic missile submarine to remain undetected at sea by remaining submerged or occasionally at periscope depth for an entire patrol. With more missiles on one US SSBN than on five Golf-class boats, the Soviets were only a year behind the US with their first SSBN, the ill-fated K-19 of Project 658, commissioned in November 1960. However, this carried the same three-missile armament as the Golfs. The first Soviet SSBN with 16 missiles was the Project 667A, the short range of the early SLBMs dictated basing and deployment locations. By the late 1960s the Polaris A-3 was deployed on all US SSBNs with a range of 4,600 kilometres, the A-3 also had three warheads that landed in a pattern around a single target. The Yankee class was equipped with the R-27 Zyb missile with a range of 2,400 kilometres. The US was much more fortunate in its basing arrangements than the Soviets, with two rotating crews per SSBN, about one-third of the total US force could be in a patrol area at any time. These missiles were the R-29 Vysota series, equipped on Projects 667B, 667BD, 667BDR, the SS-N-8, with a range of 7,700 kilometres, entered service on the first Delta-I boat in 1972, before the Yankee class was even completed. A total of 43 Delta-class boats of all entered service 1972-90, with the SS-N-18 on the Delta III class. The new missiles had increased range and eventually Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicles, the Delta-I class had 12 missiles each, the others have 16 missiles each. All Deltas have a superstructure to accommodate their large liquid-fueled missiles. Although the US did not commission any new SSBNs from 1967 through 1981, thirty-one of the 41 original US SSBNs were built with larger diameter launch tubes with future missiles in mind
4.
Scud
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Scud is a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was exported widely to both Second and Third World countries, the term comes from the NATO reporting name Scud which was attached to the missile by Western intelligence agencies. The Russian names for the missile are the R-11, and the R-17 Elbrus, the name Scud has been widely used to refer to these missiles and the wide variety of derivative variants developed in other countries based on the Soviet design. The first use of the term Scud was in the NATO name SS-1b Scud-A, the earlier R-1 missile had carried the NATO name SS-1 Scunner, but was of a very different design, almost directly a copy of the German V-2 rocket. The R-11 used technology gained from the V-2 as well, but was a new design, smaller and differently shaped than the V-2, the R-11 was developed by the Korolyev OKB and entered service in 1957. The most revolutionary innovation in the R-11 was the engine, designed by A. M, far simpler than the V-2s multi-chamber design, and employing an anti-oscillation baffle to prevent chugging, it was a forerunner to the larger engines used in Soviet launch vehicles. The SS-1e Scud-D variant developed in the 1980s can deliver a terminally guided warhead capable of greater precision, all models are 11.35 m long and 0.88 m in diameter. They are propelled by a single rocket engine burning kerosene and corrosion inhibited red fuming nitric acid with UDMH. The missile reaches a speed of mach 5. The first of the Scud series, designated R-11 originated in a 1951 requirement for a missile with similar performance to the German V-2 rocket. The R-11 was developed by engineer Viktor Makeev, who was working in the OKB-1. It first flew on 18 April 1953, was fitted with an Isayev engine using kerosene, on 13 December 1953, a production order was passed with SKB-385 in Zlatoust, a factory dedicated to producing long-range rockets. In June 1955, Makeev was appointed chief designer of the SKB-385 to oversee the program and, in July, the definitive R-11M, designed to carry a nuclear warhead, was accepted officially into service on 1 April 1958. The launch system received the GRAU designation 8K11, the R-11M had a maximum range of 270 km, but when carrying a nuclear warhead, this was reduced to 150 km. A naval variant, the R-11FM was first tested in February 1955, while the initial design was done by Korolevs OKB-1, the program was transferred to Makeevs SKB-385 in August 1955. It became operational in 1959 and was deployed onboard Project 611, during its service,77 launches were conducted, of which 59 were successful. The successor to the R-11, the R-17, renamed R-300 in the 1970s, was the most prolific of the series and it served in 32 countries and four countries besides the Soviet Union manufactured copied versions. The first launch was conducted in 1961, and it entered service in 1964, the R-17 was an improved version of the R-11
5.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
6.
Foxtrot-class submarine
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The Foxtrot class was the NATO reporting name of a class of diesel-electric patrol submarines that were built in the Soviet Union. The Soviet designation of class was Project 641. The Foxtrot class was designed to replace the earlier Zulu class, the first Foxtrot keel was laid down in 1957 and commissioned in 1958 and the last was completed in 1983. A total of 58 were built for the Soviet Navy at the Sudomekh division of the Admiralty Shipyard, additional hulls were built for other countries. The Foxtrot class was comparable in performance and armament to most contemporary designs, however, its three screws made it noisier than most Western designs. Moreover, the Foxtrot class was one of the last designs introduced before the adoption of the teardrop hull, also, although the Foxtrot was larger than a Zulu Class Submarine, the Foxtrot Class had 2 of its 3 decks dedicated to batteries. This gave it an endurance of 10 days, but the weight of the batteries made the Foxtrots average speed a slow 2 knots at its maximum submerged time capability. Due to the taking up 2 decks, onboard conditions were crowded with space being relatively small even when compared to older submarines such as the much older American Balao-class submarine. The Foxtrot class was obsolete by the time the last submarine was launched. The Russian Navy retired its last Foxtrots between 1995 and 2000, units were scrapped and disposed of for museum purposes. The last known operational unit, Zaporizhzhia, served in the Ukrainian Naval Forces until it was surrendered to / captured by Russia on March 22,2014, Russia decided not to accept it due to its age and operational unsuitability. Foxtrots played a role in some of the most dramatic incidents of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Navy deployed four Foxtrot submarines to Cuba, US Navy destroyers dropped practice depth charges near Foxtrot subs near Cuba in efforts to force them to surface and be identified. Three of the four Foxtrot submarines were forced to surface, one eluded US forces, following is a list of the 58 submarines built during the Soviet Project 641. Most saw service in the Soviet Navy, Foxtrots were also built for the Indian Navy, Libyan, and Cuban navies. Some Soviet Foxtrots later saw service in the Polish and Ukrainian navies, several Foxtrots are on display as museums around the world, including, B-39 at the Maritime Museum of San Diego in San Diego, California, United States. B-143 at the Seafront Maritime Theme Park in Zeebrugge, Belgium, b-427 at the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, United States. B-440 at Vytegra, a port on the Volga–Baltic Waterway in Russia, u-475 Black Widow at Strood, Kent, United Kingdom Indian Foxtrot submarine INS Kursura S20 at the Rama Krishna Beach, Visakhapatnam, India
7.
Rubin Design Bureau
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Rubin is the largest among the three Soviet/Russian submarine designer centers, having designed more than two-thirds of all nuclear submarines in the Russian Navy. Rubin is the Russian word for ruby, on January 4,1901 the Marine Ministry of Russia assigned the task of designing a combat submarine for the Russian Navy to three officers, Lieutenant M. N. Goryunov and Naval architect Senior Assistant I. G, Bubnov, an employee at the Ministrys Baltic Shipyard where the construction of the vessel was planned to take place. The men submitted their design to the Marine Ministry on May 3,1901, it was approved the following July, Bubnov was appointed Head of the Construction Commission for Submarines. It was this Construction Commission that after multiple transformations and name became the Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering. Construction of the Dolphin was completed in 1903, and its success in subsequent tests was the impetus for the creation of newer, more advanced types of submarines. By 1918 seventy-three submarines of classes Kasatka, Minoga, Akula, Morzh, and Vepr had joined the Russian Navy, thirty-two of these were built to the designs of I. G. Bubnov, who had become Major General of the Naval Architect Corps, in 1926 the Construction Commission for Submarines became Technical Bureau No. 4, and six years later was renamed the Central Design Bureau for Special Shipbuilding No and he designed submarines of the Dekabrist-class, Leninets-class, and Shchuka-class. Experiments on this cycle implementation were carried out on board submarines of Series XII M-92, more change came in 1937, when the Bureau was given the new name Central Design Bureau No. 18, and furthermore became an independent economic organization directly subordinated to the Second Chief Department of People’s Commissariat of Defence Industry, by the beginning of World War II,206 submarines were built to 19 different TsKB-18 designs. 54 more submarines were constructed at the Bureau during the War, during the Siege of Leningrad TsKB-18 was evacuated from Leningrad to Gorkiy. Commissioned by the Navy in 1951, the 215 unit series built to Design 613 was the largest in the world, approximately 25 to 30 of the submarines were built in People’s Republic of China, and the design was handed over to Chinese technicians. Pustyntsev, who headed the Bureau from 1951 to 1974, created the design for Project 641,75 units of this class were commissioned to the Navy in 1963. The same year the Hotel class submarine, which had begun development in 1956 as Project 658, was redesigned to enable underwater launching of D-4 ballistic missiles, in 1965 the Lenin Prize was awarded for works related to the underwater launch of ballistic missiles. In 1963 technical design 667A, a nuclear missile submarine, was developed. Joining the Soviet fleet in 1967, the Project 667A submarine became the first ship of the largest series of nuclear missile submarines, later known as “nuclear missile submarine cruisers, ” improvements to the Yankee class submarines would include the installation of longer-range and multiple-warhead missiles. The success of submarine Projects 667A and 667B would be rewarded with Lenin Prizes in 1970 and 1974, the Yankee-based ballistic missile submarine family comprises, Project 667A Yankee, Project 667B Delta I, Project 667BD Delta II, Project 667BDR Delta III, and Project 667BDRM Delta IV
8.
Severodvinsk
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Severodvinsk is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina River,35 kilometers west of Arkhangelsk, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 192,353, due to the presence of important military shipyards, Severodvinsk is an access restricted town for foreign citizens. Vikings explored the territories around the North Dvina River - part of Bjarmaland - at the start of the first millennium. British and Norman ships came to these places for mining, fur and fishing before the 13th century, tradition states that Saint Euphemius, an Orthodox missionary in Karelia, founded this monastery. The abbey stood in ruins until 1471, when two sons of Marfa Boretskaya died in a storm, their bodies were recovered on the beach near the monastery twelve days later. At the urging of Boretskaya, the monastery was restored and her sons were buried there, on August 24,1553, a ship of Richard Chancellor reached the salt-mining settlement of Nyonoksa, which is still famous for its traditional wooden architecture. The British sailors visited the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery, where they were surprised to find a community of sailors in soutanes, in late 1613, during the Time of Troubles in Russia, Polish-Lithuanian vagabonds, the Lisowczycy, captured and looted Severodvinsk with the monastery. The Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery flourished after the establishment of the Muscovy Company, in August 1618 the harbour was visited by John Tradescant the elder, who conducted a survey of an island situated opposite the monastery. This island became known to the British as Rose Island, because it was there that Tradescant found a rare plant which he named Rosa moscovita. The surviving buildings of the monastery were constructed at the close of the Muscovite period, the five-domed cathedral of St. Nicholas was built between 1670 and 1674, preceded by the Assumption church, to which it is joined by a gallery. Several decades later, the walls and towers were built of timber, the Soviets transported the best-preserved of these towers to Kolomenskoye, Moscow, Severodvinsk is the second-largest city in Arkhangelsk Oblast. Its main industry remains defense-related — the construction and repair of submarines at the huge Northern Machine-building Enterprise SEVMASH, the Soviet Unions first nuclear submarine Leninsky Komsomol was built here in 1957. At the beginning of the 1980s the worlds largest submarine, a Typhoon class, was built here. The modern city of Severodvinsk developed in the Soviet period, as it began to be built it was called Sudostroy. It received town status in 1938 and until 1957 was named Molotovsk, on September 12,1957 it was renamed Severodvinsk. During World War II a significant portion of the materials delivered by the Arctic Convoys to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk for the Soviet Union were unloaded in Severodvinsk. For example, the Empire Elgar, a British heavy lift ship that arrived in Arkhangelsk with convoy PQ16, a Russian naval-base supports the sea trials of nuclear submarines from the major submarine construction- and repair-facilities located in the area. In Soviet times the 17th-century buildings of the Nikolo-Korelsky monastery, located on the territory of the shipyard, were adapted and used for shipbuilding purposes, in recent years the monastery buildings, specifically the main church, have been restored and re-consecrated
9.
Komsomolsk-on-Amur
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Komsomolsk-on-Amur is a city in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the left bank of the Amur River in the Russian Far East. It is located on the Baikal-Amur Mainline,356 kilometers northeast of Khabarovsk, the city and its suburbs stretch for over 30 kilometers along the left bank of the Amur River. The river at this point is up to 2.5 kilometers wide, the distance to Khabarovsk—the administrative center of the krai—is 356 kilometers, to the Pacific Ocean—about 300 kilometers. The nearest other major town is Amursk, about 45 kilometers south and it is about 3,900 miles east of Moscow, and lies at the eastern end of the BAM Railway. The village of Permskoye was established on the site of Komsomolsk in 1860 by migrant peasants from what is now Perm Krai. The government of the Russian SFSR announced in 1931 plans to construct a shipyard on the Amur at the present site of Komsomolsk, the town was largely built using volunteer labor from the Communist youth organization Komsomol, thus receiving the name Komsomolsk. However, the construction of the town was aided with the use of labour from the prison camps situated in the area. The suffix on Amur was added to differentiate from other towns with the same name and it was granted town status in 1933. By the end of the 1930s, the shipyards along with facilities for heavy industry had been completed. The city developed into a center for industries such as aircraft manufacturing, metallurgy, machinery, oil refining. At present, Komsomolsk-on-Amur is the center for the manufacture of Sukhoi military aircraft. The MiG-15bis and the Lisunov Li-2 were both manufactured in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, within the framework of administrative divisions, Komsomolsk-on-Amur serves as the administrative center of Komsomolsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the city of krai significance of Komsomolsk-na-Amure—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the city of krai significance of Komsomolsk-na-Amure is incorporated as Komsomolsk-na-Amure Urban Okrug, the city is administratively divided into 2 okrugs, coinciding with the historical parts, Leninsky and Central. In the Soviet period, the division of the city was different from the present. In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of 19 October 1943 were formed Lenin, Stalin, stalinsky district included the territory of Railway Amurstali and residential community. In fact, each of the parts is a separate town, areas of the city are very different architectural appearance, Center Stalinist buildings dominated the 40-50s, Dzemgi is built up mainly typical panel apartment blocks. The sleeping area Dzemgi is not, as the majority of their residents work in enterprises located here, Komsomolsk-on-Amur has a humid continental climate
10.
NATO
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party, three NATO members are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and are officially nuclear-weapon states. NATOs headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons. NATO is an Alliance that consists of 28 independent member countries across North America and Europe, an additional 22 countries participate in NATOs Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the global total, Members defence spending is supposed to amount to 2% of GDP. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004. N. The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Unions Defence Organization in September 1948. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism. He got a hearing, especially considering American anxiety over Italy. In 1948 European leaders met with U. S. defense, military and diplomatic officials at the Pentagon, marshalls orders, exploring a framework for a new and unprecedented association. Talks for a new military alliance resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty and it included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the goal was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in. Popular support for the Treaty was not unanimous, and some Icelanders participated in a pro-neutrality, the creation of NATO can be seen as the primary institutional consequence of a school of thought called Atlanticism which stressed the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation. The members agreed that an attack against any one of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all. The treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor, although obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so. This differs from Article IV of the Treaty of Brussels, which states that the response will be military in nature. It is nonetheless assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily, the treaty was later clarified to include both the members territory and their vessels, forces or aircraft above the Tropic of Cancer, including some Overseas departments of France. The creation of NATO brought about some standardization of allied military terminology, procedures, and technology, the roughly 1300 Standardization Agreements codified many of the common practices that NATO has achieved
11.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
12.
North Korea
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North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia, constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok, the country is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone separating the two. Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948 two separate governments were formed, the communist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in the north, an invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, and no peace treaty was ever signed. North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state and formally holds elections, critics regard it as a totalitarian dictatorship. Various outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung, International organizations have assessed human rights violations in North Korea as belonging to a category of their own, with no parallel in the contemporary world. Over time, North Korea has gradually distanced itself from the world communist movement, Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution as a creative application of Marxism–Leninism in 1972. The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises, most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered from a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 0.24 and 3.5 million people, and the continues to struggle with food production. North Korea follows Songun, or military-first policy and it is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion and where public religion is discouraged. The name Korea derives from the name Goryeo, the name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a shortened form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After the division of the country into North and South Korea, the two sides used different terms to refer to Korea, Chosun or Joseon in North Korea, in 1948, North Korea adopted Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as its new legal name. After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was occupied by Japan, Japan tried to suppress Korean traditions and culture and ran the economy primarily for its own benefit. Korean resistance groups known as Dongnipgun operated along the Sino-Korean border, some of them took part in allied action in China and parts of South East Asia. One of the leaders was the communist Kim Il-sung, who later became the leader of North Korea
