Tag: Boris Yeltsin

Five key dates for post-Soviet Russia

MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Here are five major dates in Russia since the disintegration of the USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 1991: the Soviet Union dies December 8, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, elected six months earlier at the first multi-party election, agrees with his Belarussian and Ukrainian counterparts to replace their union, the USSR, with a commonwealth. As the Soviet Union disintegrates, leader Mikhail Gorbachev resigns. The USSR ceases to exist in […]

Five things to know about Vladimir Lenin’s mummified body

MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Almost 94 years after his death and a quarter century after the fall of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin’s mummified body continues to be displayed in a mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow. Though the question of what to do about Lenin’s body comes up regularly in Russia, authorities have so far been reluctant to remove the corpse. Here is what you need to know about the body of the first […]