History of the Soviet Union (1964–82) become Mao's last meeting with any Soviet leader. The Cultural Revolution caused a complete meltdown of Sino-Soviet relations, inasmuch as Moscow (along with every communist state save for Albania) considered that event to be simple-minded insanity. Red Guards denounced the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc as revisionists who pursued a false socialism and of being in collusion with the forces of imperialism. Brezhnev was referred to as "the new Hitler" and the Soviets as warmongers who neglected their people's living standards in favor of military spending. In 1968 Lin Biao, the Chinese Defence Minister, claimed that the Soviet
Predictions of the dissolution of the Soviet Union German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, and the Red Army retreated. Military observers around the world watched closely. It appears that most of them shared Hitler's opinion, expecting Germany to win, destroy the Soviet system, and establish its New Order in Europe. Very few American experts thought the Soviet Union would survive. After the beginning of the German invasion, the United States Department of War advised Franklin D. Roosevelt that the German army would conquer the Soviet Union within one to three months. In July 1941, the American general staff issued memoranda to the American press that a Soviet collapse