Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Constitutional Union party, in U.S. history, formed when the conflict between North and South broke down the older parties. The Constitutional Union group, composed of former Whigs and remnants of the...

(Encyclopedia) Latin Monetary Union. In 1865, France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland (joined in 1868 by Greece) agreed to regulate their national currencies on a uniform basis, thus making it freely interchangeable...

(Encyclopedia) U-2 incident, in U.S. and Soviet history, the events following the Soviet downing of an American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960. The incident led to the...

(Encyclopedia) Communist party, in the United States, political party that espoused the Marxist-Leninist principles of communism. In 1945, Browder's policy was attacked as being one of the “right deviationism,�...

(Encyclopedia) Niyazov, Saparmurat säpärˈmo͞orätˌ nēyäˈzôf [key], 1940–2006, Soviet and Turkmen political leader, president of Turkmenistan (1991–2006). An engineer and member of the Communist party, h...

(Encyclopedia) Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich lĭsĕngˈkō, Rus. trəfēmˈ dyĭnyēˈsəvĭch lĭsyĕnˈkə [key], 1898–1976, Russian agronomist. As president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences ...

(Encyclopedia) perestroika pərˈĕstroyˈkə [key], Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transfo...

(Encyclopedia) Rákosi, Mátyás mäˈtyäs räˈkōshē [key], 1892–1971, Hungarian Communist politician. An associate of Bela Kun and later a disciple of Joseph Stalin, Rákosi was one of the chief engineers of ...

(Encyclopedia) Stanishev, Sergei Dmitrievich, 1966–, Bulgarian political leader and political scientist. Born in Ukraine, he studied at Moscow State Univ. (B.A., 1989; Ph.D., 1994), and taught in Moscow (1998) and...

(Encyclopedia) Murayama, Tomiichi tōˌmē-ēˈchē mo͝orˌäyäˈmə [key], 1924–, Japanese politician. A long-time labor union official and member of the Socialist party, he was originally elected to parliament...