LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Soviet Union
built 234 days ago
According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enormous legislative power. In practice... the Congress of People's Deputies met infrequently and only to approve decisions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders binding on the population. The Congress of People's Deputies had the authority to ratify these decisions.
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The first leader of the Soviet Union was Vladimir Lenin, who led the Communists (then called Bolsheviks) to power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After Lenin died in 1924, power gradually consolidated in the hands of Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union until his death in 1953. Stalin was the leader from 1929 until 1953. From 1921 until 1954 3.7 mill. people were sentenced for counter-revolutional crimes. Including 0.6 mil - to death, 2.4 mill.
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By this time, the Soviet Union had concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the non-Communist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states like India and Egypt. Notwithstanding some ideological obstacles, Moscow advanced state interests by gaining military footholds in strategically important areas throughout the Third World. Furthermore, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World. For all these reasons, Soviet foreign policy was of major importance to the non-Communist world and helped determine the tenor of international relations.
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[T]he democratization of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had irreparably undermined the power of the CPSU and Gorbachev himself. The relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long-suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet republics. Calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, especially in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling ... took hold in Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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During the 1970s, the Soviet Union attempted to consolidate a closer relationship with Iraq while ... maintaining normal relations with Iran. Soviet arms transfers to Iraq started in 1959 when, after Colonel Abd al Karim Qasim overthrew the pro-Western monarchy, Iraq withdrew from the Baghdad Pact. These arms transfers continued during the 1960s and increased after the signing of the Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1972. The Soviet Union increased arms shipments to support Iraq's counterinsurgency efforts against the Kurds (whom the Soviets had earlier supported). Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union became strained in the late 1970s after discovery of an Iraqi communist party plot to overthrow the leadership and because the Soviet Union was backing Ethiopian attempts to suppress the Iraqi-supported Eritrean insurgency. Nevertheless, the Iraqi policy of acquiring Soviet arms and military equipment in exchange for oil was continued by Saddam Husayn, who succeeded to the presidency of Iraq in 1979.
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In 1987, the Soviet Union made a desperate sprint for world conquest. With the aid of a manual on the building and maintaining Hyperion class warships (found by a drunken ice fisherman and his polar bear) the Soviets began produceing what would soon become the Soviet Galactic Battle Fleet. Supreme Commander Aleksander Bashkir was appointed as the Admiral for this cosmic force. The assualt started with an orbital volly on strategic points such as the Pentagon, White House and Nuclear Missle Silos, disrupting the chain of command and making President George W. Bush spill his coffee. Hapless Soviet conscripts where deployed from drop capsules and pushed through mexico, maiming anyone with a cowboy hat and pillageing those stupid suburbs,all with their identical houses and identical soccer moms and their identical kids called Jason and Jennifer. Due to the massive advantage of the battle fleet and America having a leader with an IQ closely rivaling that of a cardboard box, the United States of America quickly fell and its allies soon followed.
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