Soviet Union

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Man and machine: Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose work as a weapons designer for the Soviet Union is immortalized in the name of the world's most popular firearm, died Monday. (Associated Press)

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HBO is moving forward with plans to produce a dramatic movie based on the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, with the former Soviet Union president collaborating as a consultant.

Participants in a meeting of former U.S. and Russian envoys in Moscow on Sunday, March 31, 2013, include (from left) Alexander Vershbow, Thomas Pickering, Jack Matlock, James Collins and John Beyrle, all former U.S. ambassadors to Russia or the Soviet Union; (on the right side of the table) Vladimir Lukin, former Russian ambassador to the U.S.; Yuri Dubinin, former Soviet ambassador to U.S.; former Russian Ambassador to Poland Leonid Drachevsky; Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies; and Alexander Bessmertnykh, former Soviet ambassador to U.S.

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Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, lies embalmed in his tomb on Moscow's Red Square on Wednesday, April 16, 1997, six days before his 127th birthday on April 22. (AP Photo/Sergei Karpukhin)

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Protesters carry a message reading "Russia Go Forward Without Putin" as thousands of people rally in Moscow on Tuesday, the Russia Day holiday marking the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. (Associated Press)

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Ten immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish, were injured in an explosion that tore through the entrance tunnel to a central Duesseldorf commuter train station on July 27, 2000. (Associated Press)