Russian Rulers since 1533

Rulers of Russia Since 1533

Name	Ruled1	Born
Ivan IV the Terrible	1533–1584	1530
Theodore I	1584–1598	1557
Boris Godunov	1598–1605	c.1551
Theodore II	1605–1605	1589
Demetrius I2	1605–1606	?
Basil IV Shuiski	1606–16103	?
“Time of Troubles”	1610–1613	—
Michael Romanov	1613–1645	1596
Alexis I	1645–1676	1629
Theodore III	1676–1682	1656
Ivan V4	1682–16895	1666
Peter I the Great4	1682–1725	1672
Catherine I	1725–1727	c.1684
Peter II	1727–1730	1715
Anna	1730–1740	1693
Ivan VI	1740–17416	1740
Elizabeth	1741–1762	1709
Peter III	1762–1762	1728
Catherine II the Great	1762–1796	1729
Paul I	1796–1801	1754
Alexander I	1801–1825	1777
Nicholas I	1825–1855	1796
Alexander II	1855–1881	1818
Alexander III	1881–1894	1845
Nicholas II	1894–19177	1868
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT (PREMIERS)
Prince Georgi Lvov	1917–1917	1861
Alexander Kerensky	1917–1917	1881
POLITICAL LEADERS OF USSR
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin	1917–1924	1870
Aleksei Rykov	1924–1930	1881
Vyacheslav Molotov	1930–1941	1890
Joseph Stalin8	1941–1953	1879
Georgi M. Malenkov	1953–1955	1902
Nikolai A. Bulganin	1955–1958	1895
Nikita S. Khrushchev	1958–1964	1894
Leonid I. Brezhnev	1964–1982	1906
Yuri V. Andropov	1982–1984	1914
Konstantin U. Chernenko	1984–1985	1912
Mikhail S. Gorbachev	1985–1991	1931
PRESIDENTS OF RUSSIA
Boris Yeltsin	1991–1999	1931
Vladimir Putin	1998–2008	1952
Dmitry Medvedev	2008–2012	1965
Vladimir Putin	2012–	1952

 

This section presents the official biographies of presidents of Russia. The Russian Federation held its first presidential election on June 12, 1991.

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Vladimir Putin

Elected on March 18, 2018.

Biography

1952

Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad on October 7, 1952.

1975

In 1975, he graduated with a degree in law from Leningrad State University. He later earned a Ph.D. degree in economics.

1985–1990

After graduation, Mr. Putin was assigned to work in the KGB. From 1985 to 1990, he worked in East Germany.

1990

In 1990, he became assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University responsible for international affairs. His next position was an advisor to the chairman of the Leningrad City Council.

1991, 1994

In June 1991, he became chairman of the St. Petersburg City Council’s International Relations Committee and, starting with 1994, he combined this post with the position of First Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg City Government (First Deputy Mayor).

1996

In August 1996, he was appointed deputy head of the President’s Administrative Directorate (Property Management Directorate).

1997

In March 1997, he became deputy head of the Executive Office of the President (Presidential Administration) and head of the Central Supervision and Inspections Directorate.

1998

In May 1998, he was promoted to first deputy head of the Presidential Administration.

1998, 1999

In July 1998, he was appointed director of the Federal Security Service and, as of March 1999, he combined this position with that of Secretary of the Security Council.

1999

In August 1999, he was appointed Prime Minister.

1999

On December 31, 1999, he became acting President.

2000

On March 26, 2000, he was elected President of Russia and was inaugurated on May 7, 2000.

2004

On March 14, 2004, he was elected President of Russia for the second term.

2008

Since May 8, 2008, Vladimir Putin is a Prime Minister of Russia.

2012

On March 4, 2012, he was elected President of Russia and inaugurated on May 7, 2012.

2018

On March 18, 2018, he was re-elected President of Russia.

Vladimir Putin has two daughters: Maria (1985), Katerina (1986).

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Dmitry Medvedev

President of Russia in 2008–2012

Biography

1965

Born September 14, 1965, in Leningrad.

1987, 1990

Graduated from the Faculty of Law of Leningrad State University in 1987 and completed his post-graduate studies at Leningrad State University in 1990. Holds a PhD in law and the title of associate professor.

1990–1999

Lectured at St Petersburg State University.

1990–1995

At the same time was an adviser to the Chairman of the Leningrad City Council and an expert consultant to the St Petersburg City Hall’s Committee for External Affairs.

1999

Deputy Government Chief of Staff.

1999–2000

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.

2000–2003

First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.

2000–2001

Chairman of the Board of Directors of OAO Gazprom, in 2001 – Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of OAO Gazprom, from June 2002 – Chairman of the Board of Directors of OAO Gazprom.

2003–2005

Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.

2005

In November, appointed First Deputy Prime Minister.

2008

March 2, Elected President of the Russian Federation.

2012

Since May 8, Dmitry Medvedev is a Prime Minister of Russia.

Married to Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva. The Medvedevs have a son, Ilya (born 1995).

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Boris Yeltsin

President of Russia in 1991–1999

Biography

1931

Mr Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, in Sverdlovsk Region.

1955–1985

After graduating from the Urals Polytechnic Institute in 1955, Mr Yeltsin worked for 30 years in the Sverdlovsk Region, eventually becoming first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

Mr Yeltsin was then transferred to Moscow, where he headed the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee’s construction department. He became secretary of the Central Committee, and then first secretary of the Moscow City Communist Party Committee.

1987

In 1987, Mr Yeltsin was dismissed from his posts and returned to the political scene only in March 1989, when he won more than 80 percent of the vote in the country’s first democratic elections and was elected a Soviet people’s deputy. In 1990, he was elected chairman of the Russian Supreme Council and that same year declared that he was leaving the Communist Party.

1991

On 12 June Mr Yeltsin was elected first president of the Russian Federation in a national election, winning more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.

1996

Mr Yeltsin was re-elected president on July 3 winning almost 54 percent of the vote in the second round.

1999

On December 31, Mr Yeltsin signed a decree announcing that he was stepping down from his post as president.

2007

Boris Yeltsin died on April 23 of a heart attack.

Khmer Rouge Cambodia 1975-79

Khmer Rouge leaders found guilty of genocide in landmark ruling

Khmer Rouge officials found guilty of genocide 

CNN- Almost four decades on from the collapse of Pol Pot’s tyrannical communist regime, an international tribunal has ruled that the Khmer Rouge committed genocide, a landmark verdict that is hoped will bring closure to millions of Cambodians.

More than 1.7 million people, or approximately a fifth of Cambodia’s population, are believed to have died from forced labor, starvation and execution under the Khmer Rouge which ruled the country between 1975 and 1979.

On Friday, the regime’s two most senior surviving members, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, now 92 and 87, were found by the court to be guilty of genocide of Vietnamese in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide against the Cham ethnic group in Cambodia during that time.

In addition, the pair were found guilty of murder, extermination, deportation, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, persecution on political, religious and racial grounds, and other inhumane acts.

Both men were sentenced to life in prison.

Nuon Chea, known in the regime as “Brother Number Two,” and Khieu Samphan known as “Brother Number Four,” are already serving life sentences in Cambodia for crimes against humanity. Friday’s sentences will be merged with their existing sentences.

Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director for Human Rights Watch, told CNN the conviction should be celebrated.

“This has been a long time coming, and obviously there’s been a tremendous amount of time taken. But you know this conviction is hugely important and I think no one should discount the importance of this action today,” said Robertson.

“(To prove) the intent of the Khmer Rouge was to wipe these people out would be something that required a lot of time and a lot of expertise. It required a deep dive into Khmer Rouge archives. And so the importance I think was that they get this verdict right, and that it was based on incontrovertible evidence.”

Former senior Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea pitured in Phnom Penh in 2011.

Friday’s decision was delivered by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) which is based in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The court is a special United Nations-backed tribunal that was formed in 2006 to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders and other regime figures.

Prior to Friday’s convictions, the ECCC has delivered only three verdicts.

In addition to 2014 case which found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, the court also sentenced Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known by his alias, Duch, to life imprisonment in 2010, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder and torture.

Kaing Guek Eav was the commandant of the notorious Tuol Sleng S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where more than 14,000 people died.

The ECCC’s glacial pace in securing only three convictions in more than a decade, at a cost of more than $260 million, has been widely criticized, especially given the suspects were nearing the end of their natural lives.

However, former ECCC investigator Craig Etcheson previously told CNN that public opinion surveys had consistently shown that a large majority of the Cambodian public supported the ECCC process.

“I would suggest that with upwards of two million people killed during the Khmer Rouge regime, a $200 million dollar tribunal works out to roughly $100 per murder victim. Surely that is not an excessive price to seek justice for such a monumental crime,” he said.

A Cambodian man sits in Choeung Ek Killing Fields near a tree that was used to beat children to death under the Khmer Rouge regime, on August 6, 2014 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Pol Pot’s right-hand man

Nuon Chea, born in 1926, was Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s brother-in-law, and was considered his right-hand man and a key ideologist throughout the regime’s reign of terror.

Trained in law in Bangkok, the 88-year-old was second-ranked in the Communist Party of Kampuchea (as the Khmer Rouge is officially known) and served a short stint as Democratic Kampuchea’s prime minister.

During a his trial in 2014, prosecutors at the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) described him as an extremist who “crossed the line from revolutionary to war criminal, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.”

Following the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, he remained a leading Khmer Rouge figure in the years the movement operated as a rebel guerrilla force in Cambodia’s west.

He surrendered in 1998, striking a deal with the government that allowed him to live as a free man near the Thai border until his arrest in 2007, according to the ECCC.

In his final statement to the court, Nuon Chea admitted he carried “moral responsibility” for events during the period, but also affirmed his innocence, according to the ECCC.

“The CPK’s policy and plan were solely designed to one purpose only, to liberate the country from the colonization, imperialism, exploitation, extreme poverty and invasion from neighboring countries,” he said.

An ongoing struggle for justice after Khmer Rouge

“The CPK’s policy was clear and specific: it wanted to create an equal society where people were the master of the country … The CPK’s movement was not designed to kill people or destroy the country. My hope and wishes were betrayed by those who destroyed the movement.”

Like many other Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan studied in Paris, publishing his doctoral dissertation on “Cambodia’s economy and industrial development.” On his return home, he became a professor and then took on a senior government position before joining the Khmer Rouge rebels.

In 1976, he became the head of state of Democratic Kampuchea, and in 1987, years after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, he replaced Pol Pot as the head of the Khmer Rouge after the former’s retirement.

Throughout the previous 2014 trial, he expressed remorse for the suffering of victims, at one point offering Buddhist prayers for the souls of those who had died. But he repeatedly expressed his position that he was merely a figurehead, with no role in Khmer Rouge policy.

China’s Long March 1934

The Long March 1934

The embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch’ang Cheng—the “Long March”—the retreat lasted 368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New York to San Francisco.

Civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists broke out in 1927. In 1931, Communist leader Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China, based in Kiangsi province in the southwest. Between 1930 and 1934, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of five encirclement campaigns against the Soviet Republic. Under the leadership of Mao, the Communists employed guerrilla tactics to resist successfully the first four campaigns, but in the fifth, Chiang raised 700,000 troops and built fortifications around the Communist positions. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed or died of starvation in the siege, and Mao was removed as chairman by the Communist Central Committee. The new Communist leadership employed more conventional warfare tactics, and its Red Army was decimated.

With defeat imminent, the Communists decided to break out of the encirclement at its weakest points. The Long March began at 5:00 p.m. on October 16, 1934. Secrecy and rear-guard actions confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they realized that the main body of the Red Army had fled. The retreating force initially consisted of 86,000 troops, 15,000 personnel, and 35 women. Weapons and supplies were borne on men’s backs or in horse-drawn carts, and the line of marchers stretched for 50 miles. The Communists generally marched at night, and when the enemy was not near, a long column of torches could be seen snaking over valleys and hills into the distance.

The first disaster came in November, when Nationalist forces blocked the Communists’ route across the Hsiang River. It took a week for the Communists to break through the fortifications and cost them 50,000 men—more than half their number. After that debacle, Mao steadily regained his influence, and in January he was again made chairman during a meeting of the party leaders in the captured city of Tsuni. Mao changed strategy, breaking his force into several columns that would take varying paths to confuse the enemy. There would be no more direct assaults on enemy positions. And the destination would now be Shensi Province, in the far northwest, where the Communists hoped to fight the Japanese invaders and earn the respect of China’s masses.

After enduring starvation, aerial bombardment, and almost daily skirmishes with Nationalist forces, Mao halted his columns at the foot of the Great Wall of China on October 20, 1935. Waiting for them were five machine-gun- and red-flag-bearing horsemen. “Welcome, Chairman Mao,” one said. “We represent the Provincial Soviet of Northern Shensi. We have been waiting for you anxiously. All that we have is at your disposal!” The Long March was over.

The Communist marchers crossed 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, mostly snow-capped. Only 4,000 troops completed the journey. The majority of those who did not perished. It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and marked the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communists. Learning of the Communists’ heroism and determination in the Long March, thousands of young Chinese traveled to Shensi to enlist in Mao’s Red Army. After fighting the Japanese for a decade, the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Four years later, the Nationalists were defeated, and Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. He served as chairman until his death in 1976.

Vietnam War 1955-75

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

ROOTS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.

During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh—inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism—formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.

Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho’s Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president.

Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.

Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.

Did You Know?

According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans.

WHEN DID THE VIETNAM WAR START?

The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

After Ho’s communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 ended in victory for northern Viet Minh forces. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.

The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956.

In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam.

THE VIET CONG

With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.

With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.

By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights.

In December 1960, Diem’s many opponents within South Vietnam—both communist and non-communist—formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

DOMINO THEORY

A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat.

Working under the “domino theory,” which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.

By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.

GULF OF TONKIN

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.

In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder, the following year.

In March 1965, Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement, Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale).

WILLIAM WESTMORELAND

In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland, in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.

Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as “free-fire zones,” from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.

VIETNAM WAR PROTESTS

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

Between July 1966 and December 1973, more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel deserted, and a robust anti-war movement among American forces spawned violent protests, killings and mass incarcerations of personnel stationed in Vietnam as well as within the United States.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.

TET OFFENSIVE

By the end of 1967, Hanoi’s communist leadership was growing impatient as well, and sought to strike a decisive blow aimed at forcing the better-supplied United States to give up hopes of success.

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two.

Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Johnson’s new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.

VIETNAMIZATION

Nixon sought to deflate the anti-war movement by appealing to a “silent majority” of Americans who he believed supported the war effort. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.

The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawal—plus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieu—as conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled.

MY LAI MASSACRE

The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968.

After the My Lai Masscre, anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968 and 1969, there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country.

On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D.C., as over 250,000 Americans gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous.

As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became “draft dodgers,” with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year.

KENT STATE SHOOTING

In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.

The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police.

By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation.

WHEN DID THE VIETNAM WAR END?

In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).

More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnam’s population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly.

In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve, boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s.

In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in 1973. The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.

Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C. On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.

Trotsky 1879-1940

Trotsky assassinated in Mexico 1940

Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by an ice-ax-wielding assassin at his compound outside Mexico City. The killer–Ramón Mercader–was a Spanish communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Trotsky died from his wounds the next day.Born in the Ukraine of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager and later dropped out of the University of Odessa to help organize the underground South Russian Workers’ Union. In 1898, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and sent to prison. In 1900, he was exiled to Siberia.

In 1902, he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronshtein). In London, he collaborated with Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but later sided with the Menshevik factions that advocated a democratic approach to socialism. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia and was again exiled to Siberia when the revolution collapsed. In 1907, he again escaped.

During the next decade, he was expelled from a series of countries because of his radicalism, living in Switzerland, Paris, Spain, and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the revolution in 1917. Trotsky played a leading role in the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power, conquering most of Petrograd before Lenin’s triumphant return in November. Appointed Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs, he negotiated with the Germans for an end to Russian involvement in World War I. In 1918, he became war commissioner and set about building up the Red Army, which succeeded in defeating anti-communist opposition in the Russian Civil War. In the early 1920s, Trotsky seemed the heir apparent of Lenin, but he lost out in the struggle of succession after Lenin fell ill in 1922.

In 1924, Lenin died, and Joseph Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR. Against Stalin’s stated policies, Trotsky called for a continuing world revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling of the increasingly bureaucratic Soviet state. He also criticized the new regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for failing to develop adequate economic planning. In response, Stalin and his supporters launched a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. One year later, he was expelled from the Politburo and in 1927 from the Communist Party. In January 1928, Trotsky was deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lived there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin.

He was received by the government of Turkey and settled on the island of Prinkipo, where he worked on finishing his autobiography and history of the Russian Revolution. After four years in Turkey, Trotsky lived in France and then Norway and in 1936 was granted asylum in Mexico. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City, he was found guilty of treason in absentia during Stalin’s purges of his political foes. He survived a machine gun attack carried out by Stalinist agents, but on August 20, 1940, fell prey to Ramón Mercader, a Spanish communist who had won the confidence of the Trotsky household. The Soviet government denied responsibility, and Mercader was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Mexican authorities.