Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(1918–2008),Russian prose writer. He joined the Red Army in 1941. Arrested in 1945 for remarks critical of Stalin, he was sent to a labour camp where in 1952 he developed stomach cancer. In 1953 he ...
Anders' Army
Popular name given to the 2nd Polish Corps which fought in the Italian campaign under the command of General Władysław Anders (1892–1970).After the German attack on the Soviet Union ...
atrocities
ǝˈträsiṯēn. pl. -iesan extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury: forces were reported to have committed atrocities against the civilian population | war ...
concentration camp
Originally a place in which non-combatants were accommodated, as instituted by Lord Kitchener during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The Boers, mainly women and children, were placed there ...
Demise of Soviet Communism
The contribution of human rights to the demise of Soviet totalitarianism is commonly portrayed as a triumph of Western values and Western power. According to a view shared by many ...
deportation
N.The removal from a state of a person whose initial entry into that state was illegal (compare expulsion). In the UK this is authorized by the Immigration Act 1971, as amended by the Immigration and ...
forced labour
Any compulsory labor service, particularly that demanded by a dominant military force of prisoners of war, detainees, or a conquered civilian population. Under some circumstances a government may ...
Freedom House
Established in October 1941, Freedom House is a United States–based nongovernmental organization dedicated to the promotion of democratic freedoms and human rights. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ...
intelligence services
Government organizations dedicated to the collection and evaluation of information, primarily about the intentions of other countries that are seen as adversaries. Such information can be economic, ...
Japanese–Soviet campaigns and relations, 1939–45
Japan fought two major campaigns against the USSR, in 1939 and in 1945 (see Map 59). In between, the two countries maintained an uneasy truce.Japan's conclusion of the Anti-Comintern ...
Joseph Stalin
(born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) (1879–1953) Soviet statesman, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR (1922–53). Born in Georgia, he joined the Bolsheviks under Lenin in 1903 ...
Kwantung Army
Japanese formation which policed what had been the Russian South Manchurian Railway zone in the Chinese province of Manchuria following Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. During the ...
Lavrenti Beria
(1899–1953)Soviet politician and head of the secret police (NKVD and MVD) (1938–53). Born in Georgia, he rose to prominence within the Soviet Communist Party under Stalin's patronage. As head of the ...
NKVD
Has origins which go back to the beginnings of Soviet power. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage (Vecheka) was founded on 20 December 1917. The ...
Raoul Wallenberg
(b. 1912, d. 17 July 1947?).Swedish diplomat Born into a family of financiers, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1935, and established a Swedish export business together with K. Lauer, ...
Soviet exiles at war
The German armed forces made use of Soviet citizens because of manpower shortages. Very rapidly this became a political matter and heralded attempts to alter Nazi policy towards the population of the ...
TEMPEST
Codename of the Polish Home Army's uprising against the Germans which started in January 1944. Its objective was to maintain Polish autonomy from the USSR, whose troops were entering Poland ...
Ukraine
People power arrives via an ‘orange revolution’ but then melts away againUkraine consists almost entirely of gently rolling plains with the highest part in the west. The broad Dnieper River flows ...
Václav Havel
(b. 6 Oct. 1936).President of Czechoslovakia 1989–92; President of the Czech Republic 1993–2003Early careerBorn in Prague, he was refused a place at university on account of his ‘bourgeois descent’. ...
war crimes
An action carried out during the conduct of a war that violates accepted international rules of war.war criminalan action carried out during the conduct of a war that violates accepted international ...
