3rd July 1979: President Jimmy Carter authorises $500,000 to aid the mujahideen in Afghanistan

By the time Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989, it had become one of the CIA’s longest and most expensive covert operations.

21st April 1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, arrives in the USA after defecting from the Soviet Union

The sensational defection of Stalin’s only surviving child made international news and four days later, at a press conference in the Plaza Hotel, she denounced the Soviet Communist regime and her father’s leadership.

27th January 1945: Auschwitz-Birkenau liberated by Soviet forces

On the 27th January 1945, Soviet soldiers from the 322nd Rifle Division liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp near the Polish city of Oświęcim.

9th November 1979: A computer error at NORAD reports that the USSR had fired hundreds of nuclear missiles at the USA

When news of the incident reached the Soviet Union, party leader Leonid Brezhnev wrote to Carter condemning the ‘tremendous danger’ caused by the error.

14th September 1959: The USSR sends the first man-made object to the Moon’s surface

Shortly after midnight in Moscow, the Soviets became the first to successfully send a human-made object to the Moon.