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In the USSR, during the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War, including the U.S.–USSR struggle for the global spread of their respective socio-economic systems and ideology, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — a very powerful General Secretary of the CPSU—remained in place, albeit weakened.

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On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in world history to fly into outer space.  The Vostok launch vehicle with the Vostok-1 spacecraft carrying Gagarin was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, located in the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan.  After 108 minutes of the flight, Gagarin successfully landed in the Saratov region, not far from Engels.  The first interesting space flight caused a big one all over the world, and Yuri Gagarin himself turned into a world celebrity.April 12, 1961, the day of Yuri Gagarin's flight in space, was a holiday - Cosmonautics Day.

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The Caribbean crisis that occurred in 1962 aggravated relations between the USSR and the USA to the limit, and indeed international relations in general.  The Cold War was in full swing, and the events that unfolded in Cuba, loyal to the Soviet Union, put the world on the brink of an unlimited nuclear war.  Fortunately, both sides managed to find a compromise, but still, the period of the Caribbean crisis turned out to be very tense for all its participants and observers.  These events are still considered the most risky in terms of the possibility of starting the Third World War!  The confrontation between the USA and the USSR, the two strongest powers on the planet, could indeed end in a completely unpredictable way.  In the United States, these events are commonly referred to as the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the main cause of it was the deployment of nuclear missiles by the Soviet Union on the territory of Cuba, an island in the Caribbean Sea, which is located in close proximity to the American coast.

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On 5 March 1953, Stalin's death triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious upon consolidating his authority as First Secretary of the party's Central Committee.  His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture.  Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev forces ordered major cuts in conventional.  Despite the cuts, Khrushchev's time in office saw the tensest years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis.