Despite its impressive nature, the Lira-class was in no real way a strategic game-changer for the Soviets in their bid to defeat the West—and its costs were immense.

The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb ... The fireball, rising and revolving, turned orange, red. Then dark streaks appeared. Streams of dust, fragments of brick and board were drawn ...

On April 22 the Soviet government decreed compulsory military training for workers and peasants who did not employ hired labour. This was the beginning of the Red Army. Its founder was Leon ...