In March 1968, one of the Soviet Union’s most powerful vessels, a diesel-electric ballistic missile submarine carrying one megaton nuclear weapons, suddenly sank in the Pacific Ocean. K-129 was on…
The AK-47, as we know it, was created by Russian weapons designer Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov in 1947. Its name is derived from the word ‘automatic’ (A), the invent…
In 1975, a political commissar aboard the Soviet Union’s Burevestnik-class frigate Storozhevoy decided something had to be done about the rampant corruption and theft of the ruling communist party under…
Sometime in the late 1950s, a top officer inside the Soviet Union’s military intelligence agency found himself disgusted with the way the leadership of the USSR conducted themselves. The Soviet…
The reign of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR) came to a screeching halt in 1991. After 68 years of reign, the collective of socialist countries were dissolved and reformed into new borders and republic entities.
This month, …
On Aug. 26, 1957, the Soviet Union announced the successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Both the United States and the Soviets had been in a race to perfect…
This week in history, East German soldiers closed the borders between East and West Berlin. What started as a makeshift wall in 1961, pieced together with barbed wire, soldiers and tanks, eventually morphed into a 15-foot high symbol of division tha…
Space is getting more and more dangerous these days, with Russia and China standing up to weaponize space. Of course, astronauts and other space travelers have carried weapons into orbit before, though they may never have carried anything like this …
The very first man to go to space was a Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, who rose to the top of his class thanks to his stunning memory, quick reactions, and poise during emergencies. That poise would come in handy since his spacecraft couldn’t surv…
As World War II ended and the Iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe, relations deteriorated between the Soviet Union and its Western allies. The Soviet repudiation of the West and…