Soviet Union - History, Politics, Foreign relations, Republics, Economy, Geography, Population and society, Culture, Holidays, Audio

pop (1990) 290 122 000; area 22 402 076 km²/8 647 201 sq mi. Former federation of 15 republics, comprising most of E Europe and N and C Asia, which until its dissolution (1991) jointly formed the world's largest sovereign state; capital, Moscow; ethnic groups included Russian (52%), Ukrainian (16%), and over 100 others; chief religion, Russian Orthodox (18%), with 70% atheist; official language, Russian; unit of currency, the rouble of 100 kopeks; Union Republics were usually known as Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR); there were in addition 20 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSR), and several smaller divisions (6 krays, 123 oblasts, 8 autonomous oblasts, 10 autonomous okrugs); formed in 1922 following the October Revolution (1917) and the subsequent Civil War; first Soviet government headed by Lenin; vigorous socialist reform begun by Stalin in the 1920s, including the collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization; territories extended in the W after World War 2, with a corridor of communist-dominated countries between USSR and W Europe; period of Cold War following World War 2; intervention to suppress Hungarian uprising (1956) and Czech programme of liberalization (1968); invasion of Afghanistan, 1979–88; series of disarmament agreements in 1980s, with new approach to international relations under Gorbachev; constitutional reforms implemented in 1989 instituted a new Congress of the USSR People's Deputies, with 2250 members; competition was introduced for some seats; the Congress elected from its ranks a 542-member Supreme Soviet, which acted as the effective legislature, and like the previous (larger) Supreme Soviet consisted of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities; the Republics had their own Supreme Soviets, Presidiums, and Council of Ministers; major internal changes in 1991, following the emerging independence of several republics and the reduced role of the Communist Party; failure of an attempted coup (19–22 Aug 1991), with resistance led by Yeltsin, resulted in the process of radical reform, liberalization, and recognition of independence movements in the constituent republics; recognition of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (1990–1) was followed by the abolition of the Communist Party and ultimately the country's dissolution (December 1991); most of the constituent republics then formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Союз Советских Социалистических Республик Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Other languages Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Transliterated: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!') (Russian: Workers of the world, unite!)
Anthem: The Internationale (1922-1944) Hymn of the Soviet Union (1944-1991)
Capital (largest city)	Moscow 55°45′N 37°38′E
Official language(s)	None; Russian de facto
Government	Federation of Soviet Republics
- Last President	Mikhail Gorbachev
- Last Premier	Ivan Silayev
Establishment	October Revolution
Area
- Total	22,402,200 km² (1st) 8,649,538 sq mi
- Water (%)	0.5
Population
- July 1991 estimate	293,047,571 (3rd before collapse)
- Density	13.08/km² (not ranked) 33.8/sq mi
Currency	Soviet ruble (RUR)
Time zone	(UTC+2 to +13)
Internet TLD	.su
Calling code	+7

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (abbreviated USSR) (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, CCCP (help·info));

The USSR was created and expanded as a union of Soviet republics formed within the territory of the Russian Empire abolished by the Russian Revolution of 1917 followed by the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920. The geographic boundaries of the Soviet Union varied with time, but after the last major territorial annexations of the Baltic States, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and certain other territories during World War II, from 1945 until dissolution the boundaries approximately corresponded to those of late Imperial Russia, with the notable exclusions of Poland and Finland.

The Soviet Union became the primary model for future Communist states during the Cold War; the government and the political organization of the country were defined by the only permitted political party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Established by four Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR grew to contain 15 constituent or union republics by 1956: Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Estonian SSR, Georgian SSR, Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Russian SFSR, Tajik SSR, Turkmen SSR, Ukrainian SSR, and Uzbek SSR.

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, and the successor states are a collection of 15 countries commonly dubbed, 'the former Soviet Union'.

History

The Soviet Union is traditionally considered to be the successor of the Russian Empire. The Soviet Union was established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (colloquially known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by Bolshevik parties. At the same time, to ensure the rights of the working class, workers' councils, known as soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, agitated for socialist revolution in the soviets and on the streets. In a related conflict with Poland, the "Peace of Riga" in early 1921 split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and Soviet powers.

From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the extraordinary economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy). Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to contend for power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating his rivals within the party, notably Lenin's more obvious heir Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet Union by the end of the 1920s. The Soviet Union became a major industrial power; Meanwhile, countless Soviet citizens were jailed and sent to Gulags (Chief Administration for Corrective Labor Camps), a vast network of forced-labor camps, or executed. Yet despite the turmoil of the mid- to late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II. Although it has been debated whether the Soviet Union had the intention of invading Nazi Germany once it was strong enough, Germany itself broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged superpower.

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. The Soviet Union aided postwar reconstruction in Eastern Europe while turning them into Soviet satellite states, set up the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, supplied aid to the eventually victorious Communists in the People's Republic of China, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, the rising tension of the Cold War turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into foes. In the absence of an acceptable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly, although a struggle for power took place behind the facade of collective leadership. At the same time, Soviet military force was used to suppress democratic uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956. During this period, the Soviet Union continued to realize scientific and technological pioneering exploits, in extenso, to launch the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, living being Laika, and later, the first human being Yuri Gagarin into Earth's orbit.

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the West while at the same time building up Soviet military strength; Another contributing factor was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid-1960s, the Soviet leadership reverted to established means of economic management. Throughout the period, the Soviet Union maintained parity with the United States in the areas of military technology, but this expansion ultimately crippled the economy. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change.

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process.

In the late 1980s, constituent republics of the Soviet Union started asserting sovereignty over their territories or even declaring independence, citing Article 72 of the USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990.

A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on March 17, 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Union in most republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and, in the summer of 1991, a new Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by most republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation.

On December 8, 1991, Presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed Belavezha Accords which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States - CIS, in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the Belavezha Accords to dissolve the Union, on December 21, 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia, including those republics that had signed the Belavezha Accords, signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dismemberment and consequential extinction of the USSR and restated the establishment of the CIS. The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, recognized the collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state. Many organizations such as the Soviet Army and Police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992 but were slowly phased out and either withdrawn from or absorbed by the newly independent states.

Politics

The government of the Soviet Union administered the country's economy and society. It implemented decisions made by the leading political institution in the country, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). A legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, and its standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, represented the principle of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet, which had an elected chairman who functioned as head of state, oversaw the Council of Ministers, which acted as the executive branch of the government. A constitutionally based judicial branch of government included a court system, headed by the Supreme Court, that was responsible for overseeing the observance of Soviet law by government bodies. According to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the government had a federal structure, permitting the republics some authority over policy implementation and offering the national minorities the appearance of participation in the management of their own affairs.

The content of the Soviet Constitution differed in many ways from typical Western constitutions. The council was thoroughly under the control of the CPSU, and its chairman - the Soviet prime minister - was always a member of the Politburo.

According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enormous legislative power. In practice, however, the Congress of People's Deputies met infrequently and only to approve decisions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders binding on the population. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Soviet Union lacked an adversarial court procedure known to common law jurisdictions. Rather, Soviet law utilised the system derived from Roman law, where judge, procurator and defense attorney worked collaboratively to establish the truth.

The Soviet Union was a federal state made up of fifteen republics joined together in a theoretically voluntary union. The republics had their own constitutions, which, along with the all-union Constitution, provide the theoretical division of power in the Soviet Union.

Leaders of the Soviet Union

The de facto leader of the Soviet Union was the First/General Secretary of the CPSU. The Soviet leader could also have one (or both) of these positions, along with the position of General-Secretary of the party.

List of Soviet Premiers (Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1923-1946); Prime Minister of the USSR (1991)) List of Soviet Presidents (Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (1917-1922); Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1938-1989); Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1989-1990); President of the Soviet Union (1990-1991))

Foreign relations

Once denied diplomatic recognition by the capitalist world, the Soviet Union had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet Union also had progressed from being an outsider in international organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of Europe's fate after World War II. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations).

The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see Eastern Bloc), military strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry. The Soviet Union's growing influence abroad in the postwar years helped lead to a Communist system of states in Eastern Europe united by military and economic agreements. Established in 1949 as an economic bloc of Communist countries led by Moscow, the Soviet-dominated Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) served as a framework for cooperation among the planned economies of the Soviet Union, and, later, for trade and economic cooperation with the Third World. The Soviet economy was also of major importance to Eastern Europe because of imports of vital natural resources from the USSR, such as natural gas. Soviet troops intervened in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and cited the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet counterpart to the U.S. Johnson Doctrine and later Nixon Doctrine, and helped oust the Czechoslovak government in 1968, sometimes referred to as the Prague Spring.

During the same period, a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The KGB (Committee for State Security), served in a fashion as the Soviet counterpart to both the FBI and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the U.S. It ran a massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union, which was used to monitor violations in law. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was replaced in Russia by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), not publicized by Russia until the end of the Soviet era during perestroika, was created by Lenin in 1918 and served both as a centralized handler of military intelligence and as an institutional check-and-balance for the otherwise relatively unrestricted power of the KGB. As with the KGB, the GRU operated in nations around the world, particularly in Soviet bloc and client states.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States.

By this time, the Soviet Union had concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the non-Communist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states like India and Egypt. Furthermore, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World. For all these reasons, Soviet foreign policy was of major importance to the non-Communist world and helped determine the tenor of international relations.

Although myriad bureaucracies were involved in the formation and execution of Soviet foreign policy, the major policy guidelines were determined by the Politburo of the Communist Party. The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy had been the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern Europe. Relations with the United States and Western Europe were also of major concern to Soviet foreign policy makers, and relations with individual Third World states were at least partly determined by the proximity of each state to the Soviet border and to Soviet estimates of its strategic significance.

After Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, he introduced many changes in Soviet foreign policy and in the economy of the USSR. The Soviet Union ended its occupation of Afghanistan, signed strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States, and allowed its allies in Eastern Europe to determine their own affairs. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall beginning in November 1989 dramatically signaled the end of the Soviet Union's external empire in Central and Eastern Europe.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, Russia claimed to be the legal successor to the Soviet state on the international stage. To prevent subsequent disputes over Soviet Union property, "Zero Variant" treaty was suggested to new independent states.

Republics

The Soviet Union was a federation of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR). In 1922, four Republics (Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belarusian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR) joined into the Soviet Union. Some of the new Republics were formed from territories acquired, or reacquired by the Soviet Union, others by splitting existing Republics into several parts. The criteria for establishing new republics were as follows:

to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to exercise their alleged right to secession; One republic, Karelo-Finnish SSR, was disbanded in 1956, and the territory formally became the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) within the Russian SFSR. Even though Soviet Constitutions established the right for a republic to secede, it remained theoretical and very unlikely, given Soviet centralism, until the 1991 collapse of the Union. In its final state, the Soviet Union consisted of the following republics:

Economy

Prior to its collapse, the Soviet Union had the largest centrally directed economy in the world. According to Soviet statistics, the country's share in world industrial production grew from 5.5% to 20% between 1913 and 1980. Although some Western analysts considered these claims to be inflated, the Soviet achievement remained remarkable.

Although these past achievements were impressive, in the mid-1980s Soviet leaders faced many problems. Production in the consumer and agricultural sectors was often inadequate (see Agriculture of the Soviet Union and shortage economy). yet the productivity of Soviet assets remained low compared with other major industrialized countries. Soviet leaders faced a fundamental dilemma: the strong central controls of the increasingly conservative bureaucracy that had traditionally guided economic development had failed to respond to the complex demands of industry of a highly developed, modern economy. Furthermore, Soviet statistics themselves might have been of limited use to Western analysts because they are not directly comparable with those used in Western countries.

Geography

The Soviet Union occupied the eastern portion of the European continent and the northern portion of the Asian continent.

The Soviet Union measured some 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) from Kaliningrad on the Gulf of Gdańsk in the west to Ratmanova Island (Big Diomede Island) in the Bering Strait, or roughly equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, east to Nome, Alaska. The east-west expanse of the continental United States would easily fit between the northern and southern borders of the Soviet Union at their extremities.

Population and society

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 150 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. In the last years of the Soviet Union, the majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%). Mainly because of differences in birth rates among the Soviet nationalities, the share of the population that was Russian steadily declined in the post-World War II period.

For many years, Soviet leaders maintained that the underlying causes of conflict between nationalities of the Soviet Union had been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family of nations living harmoniously together. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the government conducted a policy of korenizatsiya (indigenization) of local governments in an effort to recruit non-Russians into the new Soviet political institutions and to reduce the conflict between Russians and the minority nationalities. One area in which the Soviet leaders made concessions perhaps more out of necessity than out of conviction, was language policy. While Russian became a required subject of study in all Soviet schools in 1938, in the mainly non-Russian areas the chief language of instruction was the local language or languages.

The concessions granted national cultures and the limited autonomy tolerated in the union republics in the 1920s led to the development of national elites and a heightened sense of national identity. National feelings were also exacerbated in the Soviet multinational state by increased competition for resources, services, and jobs, and by the policy of the leaders in Moscow to move workers -- mainly Russians -- to the peripheral areas of the country, the homelands of non-Russian nationalities.

Religious groups

Although the Soviet Union was officially atheist and suppressed religion, according to various Soviet and Western sources, over one-third of the people in the Soviet Union professed religious belief. Two-thirds of the Soviet population, however, had no religious beliefs. For the majority of Soviet citizens, therefore, religion seemed irrelevant. Official figures on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union were not available in 1989. Immediately following the fall of the Soviet government, churches were re-opening at a recorded rate of over thirty a week.

Although there were many ethnic Jews in the Soviet Union, actual practice of Judaism was rare in Communist times. In 1928, Stalin created the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the far east of what is now Russia to try to create a "Soviet Zion" for a proletarian Jewish culture to develop. The largest groups of Muslims in the Soviet Union resided in the Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and Kazakhstan, though substantial numbers also resided in Central Russia (principally in Bashkiria and Tatarstan), in the North Caucasian part of Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan, and other autonomous republics) and in Transcaucasia (principally in Azerbaijan but also certain regions of Georgia). The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens thus varied greatly.

Culture

The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's 70-year existence. During the first eleven years following the Revolution (1918-1929), there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art.

Later, during Joseph Stalin's rule, Soviet culture was characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of Socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions (e.g.

The following articles contain information on specific aspects of Soviet culture:

Soviet art Soviet music Soviet education Soviet cinema Philosophy in the Soviet Union Soviet television Broadcasting in the Soviet Union Voluntary Sports Societies of the USSR USSR at the Summer Olympics USSR at the Winter Olympics USSR Chess Championship Palace of Culture Research in the Soviet Union Soviet Ballroom dances Soviet Student Olympiads Great Soviet Encyclopedia Censorship in the Soviet Union Glavlit Samizdat

Holidays

Date	English Name	Local Name	Remarks
January 1	New Year's Day	Новый год	Arguably the largest celebration of the year.
February 23	Red Army Day	День Советской Армии и Военно-морского флота ("Day of the Soviet Army and Navy")	Formation of the Red Army in February 1918. Is currently called День защитника отечества ("Day of the Defender of the Fatherland") in Russia
March 8	International Women's Day	Международный женский день	An official holiday marking women's liberation movement, popularly celebrated as a cross between American Mother's Day and Valentine's Day.
April 12	Cosmonautics Day	День космонавтики ("Day of Cosmonautics")	The Day Yuri Gagarin became the first man in Space, in 1961.
May 1	International Labor Day (May Day)	Первое Мая - День международной солидарности трудящихся ("International Day of Worker's Solidarity")	Celebrated on May 1 and May 2.
May 9	Victory Day	День Победы	End of Great Patriotic War, marked by capitulation of Nazi Germany, 1945
October 7	USSR Constitution Day	День Конституции СССР	1977 Constitution of the USSR accepted - December 5 previously
November 7	Great October Socialist Revolution	Годовщина Великой Октябрьской социалистической революции or Седьмое ноября	Celebrating October Revolution of 1917.

See also: Public holidays in Russia

Audio

Vladimir Lenin: What Is Soviet Power? (help·info) (Text of the speech)

National Anthem of the Soviet Union

Further reading (almost exclusively Western resourses)

Armstrong, John A. The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present. New York: Random House, 1961. Brown, Archie, et al, eds.: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Goldman, Minton: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986). Melvyn: The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey 2nd. Katz, Zev, ed.: Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York: Free Press, 1975). The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917-1922. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1966.