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.

Following the death of terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ) in March 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership.

* 1926 – Konstantin Feoktistov, Soviet cosmonaut ( d. 2009 )

* 1984 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky ( 19 September 1935 ) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory.

Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko.

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko ( 24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985 ) was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985.

The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport of Swinemünde and all of Usedom Island.

Under Stalin's administration and the leadership of such commanders as Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe in 1944 – 45 and captured Berlin in May 1945.

* 1911 – Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet politician ( d. 1985 )

* February 13 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

** Konstantin Chernenko, President of the Soviet Union ( d. 1985 )

* February 7 – Konstantin Feoktistov, Soviet cosmonaut ( d. 2009 )

* Konstantin Chernenko, later leader of the Soviet Union, becomes a candidate member of the Central Committee.

That source apparently was Konstantin Umansky, the Soviet ambassador to the US, who had deduced the leak based upon communications from Sumner Welles.

Notable Russian scientists include Dmitri Mendeleev, Nikolay Bogolyubov, Andrei Kolmogorov, Ivan Pavlov, Nikolai Semyonov, Dmitri Ivanenko, Nikolai Lobachevsky, Alexander Lodygin, Alexander Popov ( one of inventors of radio ), Nikolai Zhukovsky, Alexander Prokhorov and Nikolay Basov ( co-inventors of laser ), Georgiy Gamov, Vladimir Zworykin, Lev Pontryagin, Sergei Sobolev, Pavel Yablochkov, Aleksandr Butlerov, Andrei Sakharov, Dmitry Ivanovsky, Sergey Korolyov and Mstislav Keldysh ( creators of the Soviet space program ), Aleksandr Lyapunov, Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, Andrei Tupolev, Yuri Denisyuk ( the first practicable method of holography ), Mikhail Lomonosov, Vladimir Vernadsky, Pyotr Kapitsa, Igor Sikorsky, Ludvig Faddeev, Zhores Alferov, Konstantin Novoselov, Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, Nikolai Trubetzkoy etc.

The initiators of the movement were Alexander Busygin ( automobile industry ), Nikolai Smetanin ( shoe industry ), Yevdokiya and Maria Vinogradov ( textile industry ), I. I. Gudov ( machine tool industry ), V. S. Musinsky ( timber industry ), Pyotr Krivonos ( railroad ), Pasha Angelina ( glorified as the first Soviet woman to operate a tractor ), Konstantin Borin and Maria Demchenko ( agriculture ) and many others.

In August 1945 Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Volkov tried to defect to Britain, offering the names of all Soviet agents working inside British intelligence.

Konstantin Feoktistov, who had been a design engineer for the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz programs, was selected for this flight, becoming the only Soviet outer space designer to make a spaceflight.

Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (; 7 February 1926 – 21 November 2009 ) was a Soviet cosmonaut and an eminent space engineer.

In May 1955 Peng visited East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union, meeting with Wilhelm Pieck, Józef Cyrankiewicz, Nikita Krushchev, and the Soviet marshals Konstantin Rokossovsky and Georgy Zhukov.

One specific condition he set was that the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who had ordered troops against the Poznan workers, be removed from the Polish Politburo and Defense Ministry, to which Ochab agreed.