Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union) in the context of "Presidium of the Supreme Soviet"

Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke, at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. On the day of the funeral, of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens visiting the capital to pay their respects, at least 109 were later acknowledged to have died in a crowd crush.

Stalin's body was embalmed and interred in Lenin's Mausoleum until 1961, when it was moved to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The members of Stalin's inner circle in charge of organizing his funeral were Nikita Khrushchev, then-head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD; Georgy Malenkov, the chairman of the Presidium; and Vyacheslav Molotov, previously the Soviet Union's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (né Skryabin; 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary. He was one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies and one of the most prominent figures in the Soviet government during his rule. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, he held office as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and again from 1953 to 1956.

An Old Bolshevik, Molotov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906 and was arrested and internally exiled twice before the October Revolution of 1917. He briefly headed the party's Secretariat before supporting Stalin's rise to power in the 1920s, becoming one of his closest associates. Molotov was made a full member of the Politburo in 1926 and became premier in 1930, overseeing Stalin's agricultural collectivization (and resulting famine) and his Great Purge. Following his appointment as Foreign Minister in 1939, he signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which led to the Soviet Union's joint occupation of Poland alongside Nazi Germany and its ensuing annexation of the Baltic states. During World War II, he became deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee as well as Stalin's main negotiator with the Allies. Upon the war's end in 1945, he began to lose favour, losing his ministership in 1948 before being criticized by Stalin at the 19th Party Congress in 1952.

Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (Russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский; Polish: Andrzej Wyszyński) (10 December [O.S. 28 November] 1883 – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat.

He is best known as a state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow Trials and in the Nuremberg trials. He was the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953, after having served as Deputy Foreign Minister under Vyacheslav Molotov since 1940. He also headed the Institute of State and Law in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.

The de-satellization of the Socialist Republic of Romania from the Soviet Union was the release of Romania from its Soviet satellite status in the 1960s. The Romanian leadership achieved the de-satellization partly by taking advantage of Nikita Khrushchev's errors and vulnerabilities. Romania's independence was tolerated by Moscow because its ruling party was not going to abandon communism. Although Romania remained a member of both the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, it was not to be a docile member of either.

Even before Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power, Romania was a genuinely independent country, as opposed to the rest of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, it was even more independent than Cuba (a socialist state that was not a member of the Warsaw Pact). The Romanian regime was largely impervious to Soviet political influence, and Ceaușescu was the only declared opponent of glasnost and perestroika. Due to the conflictual relationship between Bucharest and Moscow, the West did not hold the Soviet Union responsible for the policies pursued by Romania, as it did for other countries in the region such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. At the start of 1990, Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze implicitly confirmed the lack of Soviet influence over Ceaușescu's Romania. When asked whether it made sense for him to visit Romania less than two weeks after its revolution, Shevardnadze insisted that only by going in person to Romania could he figure out how to "restore Soviet influence".

The Morozova Mansion or Zinaida Morozova's Mansion (Russian: Особняк Зинаиды Морозовой), also known as the Morozova Palace or the Spiridonovka Palace, is a neo-Gothic building in the Presnensky District of Moscow, which belonged to Zinaida Grigoryevna Morozova [ru], who was married to industrialist Savva Morozov. Built to the design of the architect Fyodor Schechtel, it has been the Reception House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia since 1938.

The Morozovs bought the land on Spiridonovka Street in 1893; the mansion was completed by 1898, and Mikhail Vrubel was invited to decorate the interiors. After the death of Savva Morozov, Zinaida Morozova sold the estate to industrialist and philanthropist Mikhail Ryabushinsky [ru], who was forced to emigrate in 1918. After the 1917 October Revolution, the state took over ownership of the mansion, and the building was transferred to the department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, and later converted into the Reception House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. During the Second World War, the mansion hosted meetings of the foreign ministers of the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. In 1995, the mansion was seriously damaged by a major fire, but was restored using surviving drawings and photographs.

Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1909 – 2 July 1989) was a Soviet politician and diplomat during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1957–1985) and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1988). Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s, Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet ("Mr. No"), or Grim Grom, because of his frequent use of the Soviet veto in the United Nations Security Council.

Gromyko's political career started in 1939 in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1946). He became the Soviet ambassador to the United States in 1943, leaving that position in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. Upon his return to Moscow he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and eventually Foreign Minister. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MFA Russia; Russian: Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации, МИД Россия, romanized: Ministerstvo inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii. MID Rossiya) is the central government institution charged with leading the foreign policy and foreign relations of Russia.

It is a continuation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which was under the supervision of the Soviet Ministry of External Relations. Sergei Lavrov is the current foreign minister.

Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev (born 17 May 1953) is a Kazakh politician and diplomat who has served as the second president of Kazakhstan since 2019. He previously served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2002 and as Chairman of the Senate from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2019. Tokayev also held the position of Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva from 2011 to 2013.

Born in Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Tokayev studied at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and later trained at diplomatic institutions in China. He began his career in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs before joining Kazakhstan's foreign service after independence in 1991. Tokayev twice served as foreign minister, from 1994 to 1999 and 2002 to 2007, as well as state secretary from 2002 to 2003, playing a key role in shaping Kazakhstan's foreign policy and its nuclear disarmament policies.