Soviet people in the context of "Nostalgia for the Soviet Union"

Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Navy Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into low Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket as the launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Missile Annex, Florida.

In response to the launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, the U.S. restarted the Explorer program, which had been proposed earlier by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). Privately, however, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and President Dwight D. Eisenhower were aware of progress being made by the Soviets on Sputnik from secret spy plane imagery. Together with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), ABMA built Explorer 1 and launched it on 1 February 1958 (UTC). Before work was completed, however, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, on 3 November 1957. Meanwhile, the spectacular failure of Vanguard TV3 on 6 December 1957, deepened American dismay over the country's position in the Space Race.

The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet (Uyghur: Уйғур Кирил Йезиқи, Arabic alphabet: ئۇيغۇر يېڭى يېزىقى) is a Cyrillic-derived alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in countries of the former Soviet Union. It is used to write Standard Soviet Uyghur.It was created around 1937 by the Government of the Soviet Union, which wanted an alternative to the Latin-derived alphabet it had devised some eleven years earlier, in 1926. The Soviets dropped their Latin script for Uyghur because they feared its local use would encourage Soviet Uyghurs to seek closer ties with Turkey, which had switched to a Latin-based alphabet in 1927–1928.

After the proclamation of the communist People's Republic of China in 1949, Russian linguists began helping the Chinese with codifying the various minority languages of China and promoting Cyrillic-derived alphabets. The Uyghurs of China thus also came to use the Cyrillic script for a period of time, until the Sino-Soviet split.

Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Геннадий Иванович Янаев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet politician and disputed President of the Soviet Union for three days. Yanayev's political career spanned the rules of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko and culminated during the Mikhail Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in 1990 he gained a seat in the 28th Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee. Later that year, on 27 December, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually formally leading, the State Committee on the State of Emergency, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August 1991 coup d'état attempt. After three days, the coup collapsed. During its brief grip of power, Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.

Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1904–18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman who served as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1964 to 1980. Following Khrushchev's removal from power, he briefly led the Soviet Union as part of a triumvirate in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Alexei Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working-class family. During the Russian Civil War, he was conscripted into the labour army. After the Red Army's demobilization in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. In the early 1930s, Kosygin returned to Leningrad and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Kosygin was tasked by the State Defence Committee with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German Army. He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry (later, Minister of Light Industry and Food). However, in 1952, Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo, thereby weakening Kosygin's position within the Soviet hierarchy.

Soviet patriotism is the socialist patriotism involving emotional and cultural attachment of the Soviet people to the Soviet Union as their homeland. It is also referred to as Soviet nationalism.

The Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp (Russian: Воркутинский исправительно-трудовой лагерь, romanized: Vorkutinsky ispravitel'no-trudovoy lager'), commonly known as Vorkutlag (Воркутлаг), was a major Gulag labor camp in the Soviet Union located in Vorkuta, Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It was in operation from 1932 until 1962.

Vorkutlag was one of the largest camps in the Gulag system. The camp housed 73,000 prisoners at its peak in 1951, containing Soviet and foreign prisoners including prisoners of war, dissidents, political prisoners ("enemies of the state") and common criminals who were used as forced labor in the exploitation of coal mines, coal mining works, and forestry. The camp was administered by the Joint State Political Directorate from 1932 to 1934, the NKVD from 1934 to 1946 and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union) from 1946 until its closure in 1962. The Vorkuta Gulag was the site of the Vorkuta Uprising in July 1953.

Kirill Trofimovich Mazurov (Belarusian: Кіры́ла Трафі́мавіч Ма́зураў, romanized: Kiryła Trafimavič Mazuraw, Russian: Кири́лл Трофи́мович Ма́зуров; 25 March 1914 – 19 December 1989) was a Soviet partisan, politician, and one of the leaders of the Belarusian resistance during World War II who governed the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1956 until 1965, when he became a member of the Politburo of the CPSU.

Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov (Russian: Валéнтин Серге́евич Па́влов; 26 September 1937 – 30 March 2003) was a Soviet official who became a Russian banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Born in the city of Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Pavlov began his political career in the Ministry of Finance in 1959. Later, during the Brezhnev Era, he became head of the Financial Department of the State Planning Committee. Pavlov was appointed to the post of Chairman of the State Committee on Prices during the Gorbachev Era, and later became Minister of Finance in Nikolai Ryzhkov's second government. He went on to succeed Ryzhkov as head of government in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

As Prime Minister Pavlov initiated the 1991 Soviet monetary reform, commonly referred to as the Pavlov reform, in early 1991. Early on he told the media that the reform was initiated to halt the flow of Soviet rubles transported to the Soviet Union from abroad. Although ridiculed at the time, the statement was later proven to be true. In June the same year, Pavlov called for a transfer of power from the President of the Soviet Union to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers. When that failed, he joined a plot to oust Gorbachev. In August, he participated in the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, which tried to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Pavlov was arrested for his involvement in the coup and went on to work in the banking sector in post-Soviet Russia. He can be seen as the last legitimate Soviet head of government since his successor, Ivan Silayev, was appointed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in breach of what were the Soviet constitutional principles.

Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel (Russian: Михаил Кузьмич Янгель; 7 November 1911 – 25 October 1971), was a Soviet engineer born in Irkutsk who was the leading designer in the missile program of the former Soviet Union.