In the postcommunist era, Armenia faces the same massive environmental cleanup that confronts the other former Soviet republics as they emerge from the centralized planning system's disastrous approach to resource management.

Since the implosion of the USSR in December 1991, Armenia has switched to small-scale agriculture away from the large agroindustrial complexes of the Soviet era.

Despite progress since the Soviet era, the unemployment rate still hovers near 30 % and there remains a huge gulf between actual and potential Gross Domestic Product.

When the site was excavated by Soviet archaeologists during 1941-45, they realized that they had discovered a building absolutely unique for the area: a large ( 1500 square meters ) Chinese-style, likely Han Dynasty era ( 206 BCE – 220 CE ) palace.

* General assessment: an extensive but antiquated telecommunications network inherited from the Soviet era ; quality has improved ; the Bulgaria Telecommunications Company's fixed-line monopoly terminated in 2005 when alternative fixed-line operators were given access to its network ; a drop in fixed-line connections in recent years has been more than offset by a sharp increase in mobile-cellular telephone use fostered by multiple service providers ; the number of cellular telephone subscriptions now exceeds the population

Exports of borzoi to other countries were extremely rare during the Soviet era.

According to C. Michael Hogan, the Daugava River began experiencing environmental deterioration in the era of Soviet collective agriculture ( producing considerable adverse water pollution runoff ) and a wave of hydroelectric power projects.

During the Cold War era, the United States was keen to establish a military base in the Indian Ocean to counter Soviet influence in the region and protect the sea-lanes for oil transportation from the Middle East.

One of the most burdensome legacies of the Soviet era is widespread environmental pollution.

Historians have liberally used emperor and, especially so, empire anachronistically and out of its Roman and European context to describe any large state and its ruler in the past and present ; sometimes even to refer to non-monarchically ruled states and their spheres of influence: such examples include the " Athenian Empire " of the late 5th century BC, the " Angevin Empire " of the Plantagenets, or the Soviet and American " empires " of the Cold War era.

Later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the term has been used in Finland for the post-1968 radicalization in the latter half of the Urho Kekkonen era.

The Gulag () was the Soviet Union government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s through the 1950s.

One of the most successful Soviet designer / inventor in this area was Rostislav Alexeyev who some consider the ' father ' of the modern hydrofoil due to his 1950's era high speed hydrofoil designs.

The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periods in Soviet history, from the mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the 1920s to the command economy and repressions of the Joseph Stalin era to the " era of stagnation " in the 1980s.

Scrapping the socialist central planning and state ownership of property of the Soviet era, Russia attempted to build an economy based on market capitalism, with often painful results.

Soviet era

This method was allegedly utilized by Russian secret services, over a period of two weeks on a cyberattack on Estonia in May 2007, in response to the removal of a Soviet era war memorial.

Kazakhstan underwent significant urbanization during the first 50 years of the Soviet era, as the share of rural population declined from more than 90 % in the 1920s to less than 50 % since the 1970s.

As the Kazakhstani rail system was designed during the Soviet era rail routes were designed ignoring intersoviet borders and to the needs of Soviet planning.

By June 2003, the lower house of Parliament announced that President Akayev and two other " puppet " leaders of Kyrgyzstan, from the Soviet era, would be given lifetime immunity from prosecution, raising the prospect of Akayev finally stepping down.

* Other facilities built during the Soviet era are either closed down, used only occasionally or restricted to military use ( e. g., Kant airbase, now a Russian air base near Bishkek ).

* 1991 – Kyrgyzstan declares its independence from the Soviet Union.

* Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Kyrgyzstan from the Soviet Union in 1991

The most limited definition was the official one of the Soviet Union, which defined Middle Asia as consisting solely of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Soviet Army retained horse cavalry divisions until 1955, and even at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was an independent horse mounted cavalry squadron in Kyrgyzstan.

As classical Russian ethnic groups were injected into the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the urbanization process began and was mainly authored by the Russian communities placed within the Soviet Republic, mostly by policies created by the communist party.

On 15 December 1990, the Supreme Soviet voted to change the republic's name to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

As in many former Soviet republics, after Kyrgyzstan regained independence in August 1991 many individuals, organizations, and political parties sought to reestablish ( and, to a certain extent, to create from scratch ) a Kyrgyz national cultural identity ; often one that included a backlash against Russians.

Kyrgyzstan has been spared many of the enormous environmental problems faced by its Central Asian neighbors, primarily because its designated roles in the Soviet system involved neither heavy industry nor large-scale cotton production.

At the end of the Soviet period there were about 50 airports and airstrips in Kyrgyzstan, many of them built primarily to serve military purposes in this border region so close to China.

Relations between the two countries were established on 20 December 1991 shortly after Kyrgyzstan became independent from the Soviet Union.

* Victory Day observances, celebration of the Soviet Union victory over Nazi Germany ( Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan )

* October Revolution Day ( the Soviet Union ( former, official ), modern Russia ( unofficial ), Belarus, Kyrgyzstan )

* 1991 – Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.

The other neighbors are the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan ( to the west and the north ) and Kyrgyzstan ( to the north ).

** Cold War: The Supreme Soviet of Kyrgyzstan chooses Askar Akayev as the republic's first president.

* August 31 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan declare independence from the Soviet Union.

* October 12 – Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by its Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.

Dubček was born in Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia ( Slovakia ), and raised in the Kyrgyz SSR of the Soviet Union ( now Kyrgyzstan ) as a member of the Esperantist and Idist industrial cooperative Interhelpo.

Soviet Russia has been invaded twice by German troops in a generation.

The Macmillan government might be willing to let him go, but he has been dead seventy-eight years and even the Soviet morticians could not make him look presentable.

Since he has just shown who is top dog, he may not be ready to receive this highest honor in the gift of the Soviet people.

If the new Soviet series has followed the general pattern of previous Russian tests, the shots were roughly half fission and half fusion, meaning a fission yield of 30 to 40 megatons thus far.

The second great dilemma has been the morality of nuclear testing, a dilemma which has suddenly become acute because of the present series of Soviet tests.

With the resumption of Soviet testing and their intransigence at the Geneva talks, however, the hope that this third choice would prove viable has been shaken.

The second choice, full testing, has become even more risky just because the current Soviet tests have already dangerously contaminated the atmosphere.

The effect of Chou En-lai's clash with Khrushchev, together with the everlasting attacks on Molotov & Co., has shifted the whole attention of the world, including that of the Soviet people, from the `` epoch-making '' twenty-year program to the present Soviet-Chinese conflict.

Somehow, the pictures and stories of Soviet T-34 tanks on Cuban beaches and Russian Mig jet fighters strafing rebel troops has brought home to all of us the stark, blunt truth of what it means to have a Russian military base 90 miles away from home.

I have often searched for a graphic way of impressing our superiority on those Americans who have doubts, and I think Mr. Jameson Campaigne has done it well in his new book American Might And Soviet Myth.

One Latin American country, Cuba, has become a Soviet bridgehead ninety miles off our coast.

They range from the Soviet Embassy on Sixteenth Street, a gray shuttered pile suggesting a funeral-accessories display house, to what Congressman Rooney has called `` that monstrosity on Thirty-fourth Street '', the modern cement-and-glass chancery of the Belgians.

The Secretary of State has also solemnly repeated a warning to the Soviet Union that the United States will not stand for another setback in Berlin, an affirmation once again taken up by the council as a whole.

He cited East Germany where after 15 years of Soviet rule it has become necessary to build a wall to keep the people in, and added, `` so long as people rebel, we must not give up ''.

Moreover, the President is meeting the Soviet leader at a time when the Administration has still not decided on the scope of America's firm foreign policy commitments.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, beginning on 23 September 1991 the official name of the nation has been the Republic of Armenia ( Armenian: Hayastani Hanrapetut ' yun ).

Soviet investment in and support of Armenian industry has virtually disappeared, so that few major enterprises are still able to function.

The electronics industry, which also was configured in the 1980s to serve Soviet markets, has not been able to compete with Western computer manufacturers.

Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been down sized as a result of economic hardship after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Without massive Soviet subsidies and its primary trading partner Cuba was comparatively isolated in the 1990s, but has since entered bilateral co-operation with several South American countries, most notably Venezuela and Bolivia.

As the economy of the Soviet Union fell into a decline during the 1990s, the People's Republic of China has emerged as a new a key partner for Cuba's foreign relations and the guardian of socialist countries around the world.