But because of the peculiar nature of the military situation in Laos, the Soviet leader must be tempted to let things ride -- a course that would appear to cost him little on the spot, but would bog Washington in a tactical mess.

The heightened tension, in fact, had been a major factor in the President's change of view about the urgency of a meeting with the Soviet leader.

Shortly before his nomination he had set forth his basic view about the problem of negotiations with the Soviet leader in these words:

At the same time the President took pains not to rule out an eventual meeting with the Soviet leader.

The question arose as to whether a frank discussion of that danger with the Soviet leader had not become urgent.

At the same time, there was increased reason for a quick meeting lest the Soviet leader, as a result of those episodes, come to a dangerously erroneous conclusion about the West's ability and determination to resist Communist pressure.

Thus he will be in a position to disabuse the Soviet leader of any notions he may have about grave Allied disunity.

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.

* 1968 – Nicolae Ceaușescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.

* 1989 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro in an attempt to mend strained relations.

After the Soviet occupation of 1979, his role as an insurgence leader earned him the nickname of " Lion of Panjshir " ().

After the Soviet withdrawal, between 1992 and 1996, he was minister of defense in the new government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan under president Burhanuddin Rabbani, and acted as its military leader in the civil war against competing militias around Kabul.

* 1945 – Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip " Tito " Broz signs an agreement with the Soviet Union to allow " temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory ".

* 1996 – Dzhokhar Dudaev, Soviet Air Force general and Chechen leader, 1st President of Ichkeria ( b. 1944 )

* 1983 – American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

* 1985 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.

During the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) leadership in Catalonia.

In the conferences during World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin openly requested the concession of Soviet military bases on the Straits, even though Turkey was not involved in the war.

Karmal would remain in exile until December 1979, when the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan ( with the consent of the Afghan government ) to stabilise the situation in the country, they killed Amin, the leader of the PDPA and the Afghan government.

Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky commonly used the terms " Bolshevism " and " Bolshevist " after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true Leninism and the state and party as they existed under Joseph Stalin's leadership.

" Meanwhile, the Soviet Union brandished its position as the leader of the " progressive " and " anti-imperialist " camp.

After disagreements between Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and the People's Republic of Albania, a Tito-Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade.

* 1943 – Yakov Dzhugashvili, Soviet soldier, the oldest child of Joseph Stalin ( b. 1907 )

* 1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The burdens the Red Army and the Soviet Union endured had earned it massive respect which, had it been fully exploited by Joseph Stalin, had a good chance of resulting in a communist Europe.

Membership in the party was as much a prerequisite for admission to colleges and for government jobs as in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin or Nikita Krushchev.

* Rummel, Rudolph Joseph ( 1990 ) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917.

At Moscow, Sun Yat-sen University Portraits of Chiang were hung on the walls ; and, in the Soviet May Day Parades that year, Chiang's portrait was to be carried along with the portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and other socialist leaders.

Working closely with Winston Churchill of Britain, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt sent his forces into the Pacific against Japan, then into North Africa against Italy and Germany, and finally into Europe starting with France and Italy in 1944 against the Germans.

Media reports also exposed crimes committed by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet regime, such as the gulags, his treaty with Adolf Hitler, and the Great Purges, which had been ignored by the official media.

Some examples of democide cited by Rummel include the Great Purges carried out by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, the deaths from the colonial policy in the Congo Free State, and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, which resulted in a famine killing millions of people.

The situation was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national socialism and communism in Europe.

Hoxha declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and strongly admired the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

In 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev condemned the cult of personality that had been built up around Joseph Stalin and also accused him of many grave mistakes.

From the outset, this new republic held that film would be the most ideal propaganda tool for the Soviet Union because of its widespread popularity among the established citizenry of the new land ; Vladimir Lenin, in fact, declared it the most important medium for educating the masses in the ways, means and successes of Communism, a position which was later echoed by Joseph Stalin.

* 1956 – In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.

* 1926 – Svetlana Alliluyeva, Soviet daughter of Joseph Stalin ( d. 2011 )

Finland cut such a deal with Joseph Stalin's government in the late 1940s, and it was largely respected by both parties — and to the gain of both parties — until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This was especially marked in the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a communist proponent of reunification, was dead by March 1953.

That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations ( 1933 ), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm ( 1935 ), won back the Saar ( 1935 ), remilitarized the Rhineland ( 1936 ), formed an alliance (" axis ") with Mussolini's Italy ( 1936 ), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War ( 1936 – 39 ), seized Austria ( 1938 ), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.

The leadership of Joseph Stalin led to a change in his view of the Soviet Union even though his initial impression of Stalin himself was mixed.