In a secret detailed letter to the Soviet leadership of July 21, 1967, Sakharov explains the need to " take the Americans at their word " and accept their proposal " for a bilateral rejection by the USA and the Soviet Union of the development of antiballistic missile defense ", because otherwise an arms race in this new technology would increase the likelihood of nuclear war.

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.

These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership.

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.

Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved, for itself, the right to define " socialism " and " capitalism ".

The Soviet leadership believed, based on their perception of Kennedy's lack of confidence during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, that he would avoid confrontation and accept the missiles as a fait accompli.

When Lenin died, the Soviet leadership was uncertain how the building of the new, socialist society should proceed.

The declaration stated that the Politburo, Orgburo and the Secretariat was taking complete control over the party, and it was these bodies which elected the delegates to the Party Congresses – in effect making the executive branch, the Party Congress, a tool of the Soviet leadership.

If the Soviet leadership had the power to appoint regional officials, they had the indirect power to elect the delegates of the Party Congresses.

This was not enough for Trotsky, and he wrote an article in Pravda where he condemned the Soviet leadership and the powers of the center.

Zinoviev, Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership then accused him of factionalism.

Even so, Kamenev and Zinoviev were crushed at the congress, and 559 voted in favour of the Soviet leadership and only 65 against.

The dispute between Ordzhonikidze and Molotov, who represented the Soviet leadership, was settled by the establishment of a Congress Commission, which consisted of Stalin, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, other Politburo members and certain economic experts.

Beria's fall also led to criticism of Stalin ; the party leadership accused Beria of using Stalin, a sick and old man, to force his own will on the Soviet Union during Stalin's last days.

Under Khrushchev the local party leadership in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ( Russian SFSR ) witnessed the largest turnover in provincial leaders since the Great Purge ; two out of three provincial leaders were replaced in 1953 alone.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union emerged from the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin.

The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986, and consequent lack of foreign exchange reserves in following years to purchase grain profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership.

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.

Fraying amongst the members of the Warsaw Pact nations and instability of its western allies, first indicated by Lech Wałęsa's 1980 rise to leadership of the trade union Solidarity, accelerated, leaving the Soviet Union unable to depend upon its Eastern European satellite states for protection as a buffer zone.

Eisenhower was also criticized for his handling of the 1960 U-2 incident and the international embarrassment, the Soviet Union's perceived leadership in the nuclear arms race and the Space Race, and his failure to publicly oppose McCarthyism.

Some time ago, however, Mr. Khrushchev decided that when bigger bombs were made, the Soviet Union would make them.

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.

This incident, coupled with Stalin's demands for the restitution of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan to the Soviet Union ( which were lost by Turkey with the Russo – Turkish War of 1877 – 1878, but were regained with the Treaty of Kars in 1921 ) was one of the main reasons why Turkey decided to give up its general principle of neutrality in foreign affairs.

Notified that British aid to Greece and Turkey would end in less than six weeks, and already hostile towards and suspicious of Soviet intentions, because of their reluctance to withdraw from Iran, the Truman administration decided that additional action was necessary.

In January, 1947, fear of Soviet and American intentions led to a secret meeting of senior cabinet ministers, where it was decided to press ahead with the development of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, an issue which later caused a split in the Labour Party.

After the Black Army had served its purpose in aiding the Red Army to stop the Whites under Denikin, the Soviet communist government decided to eliminate the anarchist forces.

Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo and his publisher decided to suspend reprinting of Johnny Got His Gun until the end of the war.

In August 1960, due to rejection of requests to the UN for aid to suppress the South Kasai and Katanga revolts, Lumumba's government decided to request Soviet help.

Although the 140 mm gun was considered a real interim solution it was decided after the fall of the Soviet Union that the increase in muzzle energy was not worth the increase in weight, and therefore more money was poured into research programs that could augment the muzzle energy of existing guns to match the 140 mm gun without the incrementing weight disadvantages.

To bolster the Parcham faction, the Soviet Union decided to intervene on December 24, 1979, when the Red Army invaded its southern neighbor.

After Noli's regime decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, a bitter enemy of the Serbian ruling family, Belgrade began making wild allegations that the Albanian regime was about to embrace Bolshevism.

Hoxha and Shehu apparently decided in May or June 1960 that Albania was assured of Chinese support, and they openly sided with the PRC when sharp polemics erupted between the PRC and the Soviet Union.

In another remarkable event of 1955, the Soviet Union decided to return the Porkkala peninsula to Finland, which had been rented to the Soviet Union in 1948 for 50 years as a military base, a situation which somewhat endangered Finnish sovereignty and neutrality.

Though Ribbentrop was all for taking Stalin's offer, Hitler by this point had decided that he wanted to attack the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Hitler had decided that a more firm alliance with Japan would secure a potential ally against the Soviet Union.

Hitler decided not to respond, and instead instructed his military to begin planning for an attack on the Soviet Union.

Lenin, who had earlier hoped for a speedy Soviet revolution in Germany and other parts of Europe, quickly decided that the imperial government of Germany was still firmly in control and that, without a strong Russian military, an armed conflict with Germany would lead to a collapse of the Soviet government in Russia.

He also had difficulties with the standard infantry weapons at the time, and so he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military.

The Soviet leadership wanted to ease Karmal out of politics, but when Najibullah began to complain that he was hampering his plans of National Reconciliation, the Soviet Politburo decided to remove Karmal ; this motion was supported by Andrei Gromyko, Yuli Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov.

Hitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons why the UK and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference regarding Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless.

Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German – Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the " Polish region ".