Stalin

This political figure, born Joseph Dzhugashvili, adopted the name Stalin, meaning "Man of Steel," when he was 34 years old. He joined the Social Democratic party, and once the RSDLP split in 1903, Stalin became a member of the Bolshevik party. After several years of of run-ins with government authorities and involvement with Pravda and the October Revolution, he was elected to the post of commissar for nationalities. Following the subsequent civil war, he gained the majority vote and was elected to General Secretary of the Communist party. Afterwards he dedicated a lot of time advocating the achievement of Socialism within a single country.

Georgi Maksimilianovich Malenkov

Georgi Maksimilianovich Malenkov was a political commissar in the Red Army who, in the Second World War, was part of the five-man defense council which managed the Soviet Union's war effort. Malenkov rose to power under Stalin along with another soldier, Beria. The two were both assigned to fill out Stalin’s deadly orders. He succeeded Stalin after his death in March of 1953, and served as secretary to the Communist party for a short while until he was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev. Malenkov was the first of the subsequent three leaders known as the troika to warn that a nuclear war could lead to global destruction. The threesome inspired Sergei Prokofiev’s fourth movement of Suite from Lieutenant Kijé entitled, “Troika.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Nasser, a highly revered political figurehead in the Arab/Muslim world, was a prominent leader in freeing the Middle East from European control in the mid-fifties. At the time, Egypt felt colonial overtones from Britain and France, and Nasser dedicated himself to its freedom. In 1952, Nasser aided in the organization of a revolt under General Neguib against the Royal Family of Egypt, who citizens felt were tacitly helping Britain extend its influence into the country. Once the general resigned, Nasser, the shoo-in to replace him, succeeded Neguib in 1954. Nasser subsequently directed his efforts not only toward Egypt, but towards other Arab countries as well. Upon speaking out publicly against the two European powers, Nasser gained huge popularity, and used his new notoriety to effect change in domestic and foreign policies within Egypt. The controversy surrounding Nasser was in his decision to request alliance with America’s Cold War Enemy, the USSR, to help finance and engineer a plan to employ hydro-electric power within the nation. Asking America for help was “politically impossible,” as America openly supported Israel. His latest years were spent trying to modernize Egypt’s militant army.

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century; responsible for masterpieces in several genres of classical music composition: ballets, operas, concertos and symphonies. Prokofiev, who was from the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), was a supporter of the Bolshevik party, but left the Soviet Union in hopes of fulfilling his ambitious music, considered “revolutionary” for the time period. While his health began to decline and his opinions of music were changing, the Soviets were tightening their authority over domestic arts. On March 5, 1953, Sergei Prokofiev died at the age of 61, coincidentally the same day as Stalin. The masses of people that gathered to mourn over Stalin’s death made it impossible for Prokofiev’s body to be carried out for burial until 3 days later.

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller was a politician who has assumed many titles. Rockefeller is best known for holding the position of the Forty-first Vice President of the Unites States under Gerald Ford in the mid-seventies. However, his political influence began two decades earlier, when he served as Special Assistant to President Eisenhower for Foreign Affairs. In 1953, Rockefeller became undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Soon after, he was appointed head of a committee that was responsible for facilitating several supervised CIA operations. Rockefeller concurrently assumed the title of president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which financed the Special Studies Project, a seven panel planning group that helped identify national problems and opportunities. The Special Studies Project came into public knowledge when it described military subpanel reports that regarded confrontation with the USSR. Finally, Rockefeller left Eisenhower's government in 1956 before being elected governor of the state of New York.

Roy Campanella

Roy Campanella was an African American baseball player best known for his tenure as a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Major League Baseball and Negro Leagues in the 1940’s and 1950’s. One of the best catchers in the history of the sport, Campanella played a large part in breaking the color barrier in Baseball, and was one of the first colored players bought into previously segregated Major League Baseball. To further prove his worth, Campanella also won 3 Most Valuable Player awards in the 1950’s, and his stellar performance led the Dodgers to their first championship against their then-rivals, the New York Yankees. Campanella played for nearly 10 years before being permanently paralyzed by in a car accident. Following the accident, Campanella remained active with the Dodgers, assisting them with scouting for new players for years following the accident. He died at 71 from a heart attack.

Communist Bloc

“Communist Bloc” refers to the eastern bloc states of the Warsaw pact, consisting of the countries that chose or were essentially forced to become a “satellite nation” to the Soviet Union. This term however was frequently used to describe any and all allies of the Soviet Union during the Cold war. The original “Communist Bloc” was a union of countries occupied by the Soviet Union following World War II, united for the purpose of raising assets and manpower to rebuild eastern European nations destroyed by the war, with the Soviet Union directing many of these resources to themselves. The German land possessed by the Soviets was transferred to Poland, which was at the time, also controlled by the Soviets. Stalin raised support in these largely non-communist countries by convincing leaders that he was in the process of undermining the British controlled zone, and that the United States would withdraw, leading to a fully communist Germany. This, along with smaller programs to empower the communist minorities in eastern European nations, as well as the forceful will of Stalin upon the people, allowed communism to spread to a seat of prominence in the Eastern Bloc countries.