Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania for 21 years, earning a reputation as a brutal dictator. During his reign, he developed the largest network of spies in Eastern Europe, silenced his opposition with a secret police force known as the Securitate, and eventual…
In October 1961, border disputes led to a standoff and for 16 hours the world was on the brink of war while Soviet and American tanks faced each other just 300 feet (100 meters) apart. In August 1961 Washington and its British and French allies had fail…
A guerrilla soldier aims a Stinger missile at passing aircraft near a remote rebel base in the Safed Koh Mountains on February 10, 1988, in Afghanistan. The end of Soviet military occupation, which began in 1979, has left the Afghan Army more vulnerable to…
Conrad Schumann was immortalized in this photograph as he leapt across the barricade that would become the Berlin Wall. The photo was called “The Leap into Freedom”. It became an iconic image of the Cold War. Born in Zschochau, Saxony during the middle …
Here Fidel Castro is seen smoking a Cuban cigar and wearing two Rolex watches in the Kremlin while he chats with Khrushchev, in front of a Karl Marx picture. The non-verbal body language in this photo is absolutely fascinating. Notice everybody in the r…
The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 divided families and neighborhoods in what had been the capital of Germany. The Wall represented a uniquely squalid, violent, and ultimately futile, episode in the post-war world. Life was changed overnight in…
The socialist fraternal kiss became famous via Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, who were photographed exercising the ritual. During the festivities of the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic of East Germany in 1979, photographer Regis …
The relationship between Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev began when Cuba became a communist country and Cuba started to establish close relations with the Soviet Union. Both Fidel and Nikita shared the same beliefs, such as communism being the best t…
This detonation, known as the Baker Test, was part of Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships. The Crossroads tests were the first of many nuclear tests held…