| A | B |
| czars | ruthless rulers of Russia until 1917 |
| Bolsheviks | extremists that seized power during Russian revolution of 1917 |
| Chernobyl | Soviet nuclear accident in 1986 |
| command economy | single economy controlled by the government |
| "openess" | Glasnost |
| Josef Stalin | made Soviet Union an industrial power |
| communism | follows teachings of Marx and Lenin: government is the single authority |
| "restructuring" | Perestroika |
| market economy | free enterprise economy |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | implemented perestroika and glasnost |