He convinced Khomeini to end the Iran-Iraq war and broke Iran's international isolation by establishing trade relations with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
But unlike two other ex-Soviet carriers in China that ended up as theme parks, this one was taken to a navy shipyard where, in 2005, it got a telltale coat of Chinese military paint.
Demand for oil increased over recent decades as previously moribund economies such as the former Soviet Union, India and China joined the chorus.
It has built one of the world's fastest-growing economies, thanks mainly to the large-scale export of oil, metals and grains, which helps to ensure that it doesn't rely too heavily for trade on Russia, its former Soviet neighbor, or on China.
In part, the decline was down to the collapse of trade with the Soviet block: new trade with China filled only part of the hole.
He says that the Shenzhou VI is bigger than the Shenzhou V and represents an evolution beyond the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft technology on which China had based earlier ships.
At the same time, both the United States and China were wary of the Soviet Union's military power and expansionist agenda.
Then only the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China had acquired nuclear weapons.
Some 28, 000 illegals, most from ex-Soviet states, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, China or Somalia, were caught on the Czech-German border in 1998.
As a result of China, India and the former Soviet Union embracing market capitalism, the global labour force has doubled in size.
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The entry of China, India and the former Soviet Union into market capitalism has, in effect, doubled the world supply of workers, from 1.5 billion to 3 billion.
First, the global economic playing field is being leveled, and millions of people who were out of the game - from China, India and the former Soviet empire - are now walking onto the field, each dreaming of a house, a car, a toaster and a microwave.
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No surprise that those include visitors from China, the Gulf states and the former Soviet republics.
Analysts believe the Shenzhou spacecraft that China is developing is an enlarged copy of the Soviet-era workhorse - the Soyuz.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | China manned space mission nears
In 1979, the political cooperation between the United States and China was rooted largely in our shared rivalry with the Soviet Union.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Holds Town Hall with Chinese Youth
In some southern African countries, half of new mothers could soon die of AIDS. Epidemics are emerging in China, India, eastern Europe and countries in the former Soviet Union.
MarkMonitor's study shows that 44% of the sites advertised in drug-selling spam were hosted in the U.S. China hosted 18% of the pages, while the former Soviet states gave rise to another 12%.
In the 1990s, competition from developing countries with lower production costs (such as India and Brazil, as well as China) and the emergence of steel suppliers from the former Soviet Union led to gluts and deflated prices.
Having gone so close to the brink of conflict, rather as America and the Soviet Union did after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, America and China sensibly declared a truce and set out to stabilise their relations.
China is also reportedly close to deploying its first aircraft carrier, a refitted ex-Soviet ship.
ECONOMIST: Wary detente between China and America: Another go at being friends | The
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