PerestroikaPolitical movement for reformation within the communist party
Definitions:
The policy or practice of restructuring or reforming the economic and political system. First initiated in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev.
gulagSoviet labor camps
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A system of labor camps maintained in the former Soviet Union.
collectivizationGovernmental policy of consolidating individual land into collective farms
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The organization of all of a country's production resources into a series of collective farms, in which workers are paid by the government and share profits from their products.
nomenklaturaCategory of people in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held key administrative positions
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The category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries' activity.
samizdatThe clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state
Definitions:
The practice in the former Soviet Union and countries in the Eastern Bloc of replicating censored publications by hand and passing them from reader to reader.