Nadezhda Popova was part of a unit of Soviet women pilots who flew old biplanes to bomb the invading Germans. As the Wehrmacht approached Moscow in 1941, Stalin, influenced by Marina Raskova, one of very few women in the Soviet air force before the war, agreed to set up a women’ s air force unit, a night bomber regiment. From mechanics to navigators, pilots and officers, it was composed entirely of women.

Gyula Horn was the last Communist Foreign Minister of Hungary, who started opening the Iron Curtain. On 27 June 1989 he joined Alois Mock, the Austrian Foreign Minister, to pull down a section of the barbed wire dividing their countries. During the following months thousands of East Germans used the route to emigrate to Austria and West Germany. It was the beginning of the end for East German Communism. In Hungary Horn is better known for a massive austerity programme when he was Prime Minister in 1995. The package sparked massive opposition.

Direct communication between the superpowers was never established with a direct, dedicated phone line, it has emerged.

Russia’s only independent election monitoring group has been shut down for six months after failing to register as a “foreign agent” under a controversial new law. The legislation requires any organisation receiving funds from abroad to label itself a “foreign agent”, or face fines and closure.

PM to visit dictatorship that is expected to play key role in Afghanistan military withdrawal

Propaganda has become a dirty word but it remains a much-employed tool, as this provocative show proves. Posters, films, cartoons and tweets expose the mind-boggling ways in which states from over the world have tried to exercise their powers of persuasion in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union, has been admitted to the Kremlin hospital in Moscow for tests, amid growing concern over his health.

Viktor Kulikov was among the very last survivors of the old Soviet military establishment, a Second World War veteran unswerving in his lifelong communism and suspicion of the West, who rose to be the top commander of the Warsaw Pact and a key figure in the crisis that led to the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981.

The Americans, Sat, ITV / Spying on Hitler’s Army: the Secret Recordings, Sun, Channel 4

The early days of the suffragettes deserve better than a micro-budget sitcom on BBC4. At least ITV snuck a no-nonsense Soviet-agent housewife into its schedule last night

Where are you now and what can you see? I'm in the Dutch "highlands". No windmills but beautiful "Ruysdael" clouds drifting over.

Shaun Walker meets the Communist party faithful as the Soviet leader goes back on display

Victim had been drinking with two men, who allegedly started beating him when he revealed he was gay

Barbara Hewson made the controversial suggestion in an article for the online magazine 'Spiked'