There is considerable debate as to how much the priest Silvester influenced Russian Tsar Ivan IV, known as Ivan the Terrible. According to Nikolay Mikhaylovich Karamzin, the great early-nineteenth-century Russian historian, Ivan the Terrible only acted virtuously when he was guided by Silvester, and all that was good in Ivan ought to be attributed to Silvester. Yet, another great nineteenth-century Russian historian, S. F. Platonov, denies Silvester both the credit for Ivan's farsighted policy of strengthening Russia's southern frontier and the opprobrium for Ivan's brutal responses to the social crises that destroyed the Muscovite state by the 1580s. Most twentieth-century experts on Ivan, however, argue that Silvester must assume some blame for Ivan's later violence and debauchery, viewing the Tsar's maniacal behavior as a direct consequence of, and reaction against, Silvester's stern treatment of the youthful Ivan...

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Finland became independent from Russia in 1917, but relations with Russia (and its successor, the Soviet Union) remained uneasy. In 1939, following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), in which the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were given to the Soviet Union, the Soviets invaded eastern Finland. In the Winter War that ensued, the outnumbered Finns fought courageously, but in March 1940 they were forced to cede a large area of southeastern Finland to the Soviets in the Treaty of Moscow. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Finns resumed hostilities, hoping to reclaim the territory they had lost earlier. Finland also adopted a pro-German foreign policy, and Finnish president Risto Ryti refused to change his position even as the tide of the Second World War turned against Germany.
Finland emerged from the war with its freedom of action in foreign policy and defense matters curtailed. Although independent, Finland was within the Soviet sphere of influence, leading it to sign a treaty with the Soviet Union in which it promised to remain neutral in the struggle between East and West. Finland did not join the European Recovery Plan (the Marshall Plan), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or other initiatives or organizations that the Soviets deemed hostile...

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The question of who "started" the cold war has been an issue of rancorous debate among historians and policymakers for more than four decades. Most of what was written in the 1950s and 1960s about the origins of the cold war came to be defined as "orthodox" or "traditional." In the 1960s and 1970s a new interpretation of the sources of the cold war emerged and was dubbed "revisionist" because of its challenge to the orthodox interpretation. Shortly after the first revisionist studies appeared, and at an accelerated pace during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as archives in the Soviet Union (later Russia) and Soviet-bloc countries opened to Western scholars, a "postrevisionist" reading of the origins of the cold war appeared.
Traditionalists put the blame for the cold war on the Soviet Union. They argue that the Soviets' denial of free elections in Poland and Czechoslovakia, their meddling in Greece, Turkey, and Iran, their assistance to communist forces in China, and their opposition to U.S.-sponsored postwar plans for controlling weapons and promoting economic development--such as the Baruch Plan and the Marshall Plan--caused the Truman administration to reassess its initially more conciliatory approach to the Soviet Union and adopt a harder line toward it. There are differences among traditionalists regarding the driving motivation behind Soviet conduct. Some emphasize the messianic nature of communist ideology, while others offer a combination of traditional Russian imperial impulses, and also point out that Soviet conduct was in line with historical patterns of traditional power politics.
Revisionists argue that Soviet behavior was largely defensive in nature. After the devastation of the Second World War, the Soviet leadership was interested in rebuilding its country and addressing legitimate security concerns--especially making sure that the countries of east and central Europe would no longer be used as a corridor of invasion into Russia. According to this argument, it was the United States, driven by a capitalist need for markets and raw materials, that adopted a confrontational, bullying tone toward the Soviet Union, leading to the outbreak of the cold war...

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Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, invited description, when not caricature, as an archetype of the specialist with tunnel vision, a man who would send staff problems to subordinates on Christmas Eve and expect a solution on his desk the morning of 26 December. The operational plan bearing his name is usually described in corresponding terms, as a comprehensive, detailed scheme for deploying the German army so as to conquer France by destroying the French army in one giant enveloping movement through the Low Countries.
In the years after the Great War supporters of the plan--most of them German officers--presented it as a design for victory, disrupted by the mistakes of Schlieffen's successor. Critics, whose numbers have steadily increased, describe it as a doomsday machine triggering general war by its emphasis on a first strike and as a military myth, requiring its details to go impossibly right in order to have any real chance of succeeding...

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In the days after September 11, doomsday scenarios like a terrorist nuclear attack suddenly seemed plausible. Even the use of a crude nuclear device would have a devastating effect, both physically and psychologically. In response to these threats, governments and agencies have sought to upgrade worldwide protection against acts of terrorism involving nuclear and other radioactive materials.
Ideological...

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The outbreak of war in August 1914 came as a seismic shock to a European Left that was well on its way to making terms in practice with the capitalist society it continued to challenge in principle. Anarchism and Anarcho- Syndicalism, influential for decades in Spain, Italy, and France, was in retreat before states whose intelligence and security services were proving all too capable of coping with "propaganda of the deed." Marxism had been more successful, both in organizing workers and securing representation in the parliamentary systems of the Continent...

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The Russian Revolution fundamentally transformed the political, economic, and sociological landscape of one of the world's largest and most populous countries. The episode dramatically altered the shape and character of international relations across the globe during the twentieth century as well, and would serve as an inspiration for future revolutionary groups...

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Counterrevolutionary activity aimed at restoring representative government...

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The Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilich Lenin seized power in Russia and proceeded to eliminate opposition by ruthless repression and violation of fundamental human rights...

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Russian tsar who attempted the modernization and expansion of Russia but fell victim to famine and the ghost of a dead child...

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