Chapter 5 Terms Flashcards
The multinational union formed from the Russian empire in 1922 and dissolved in 1991; commonly known as the Soviet Union.
USSR
The territories of Russia that are located east of the Ural Mountains.
Siberia
A region of winters so long and cold that the ground is permanently frozen several feet below the surface; a cold, treeless area, between the ice cap and the continental climate forrest, where the subsoil is permanently frozen.
tundra
Permanently frozen soil that lies just beneath the surface.
permafrost
Subartic coniferous forrests.
taiga
Semiarid grass-covered plains.
steppes
People whose way of life and economy are centered on tending grazing animals that are moved seasonally to gain access to the best pasture.
nomadic pastoralists
Nomadic pastoral people centered in East and Central Asia, who by the thirteenth century had established by conquest an empire that stretched from Europe to the Pacific.
Mongols
An economic system based on a state-controlled economy, a socialized system of public services, and a centralized government in which citizens participate only indirectly through the Communist Party; a political ideology and economic system, based largely on the writings of the German revolutionary Karl Marx, in which the state owns all farms, industry, land, and buildings and provides for the needs of the people (a version of socialism); an ideology that calls on workers to overthrow capitalism and establish an egalitarian society where workers share what they produce.
communism
Usually a wealthy minority that owns the majority of businesses, factories, farms, and other means of production.
capitalists
A period of conflict, tension, and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991; the geopolitical rivalry that pitted the US and western Europe, who were espousing free market capitalism and democracy, against the USSR and its allies, who were promoting a centrally planned economy and a communist state.
Cold War
literally “restructuring”; the restructuring of the Soviet economic system that was done in the late 1980s in an attempt to revitalize the economy.
perestroika
Literally “openness”; the policies instituted in the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev that encouraged more transparency and openness in Soviet government and society.
glasnost
The selling of formerly government-owned industries and firms to private companies or individuals; the sale of industries that were formerly owned and operated by the government to private companies or individuals.
privatization
To seize private property and place under government ownership, with some compensation.
nationalization