Soviet Union

Союз Советских Социалистических Республик Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Other names ←   ←   ←   ← 1922–1991 ↓ Flag State Emblem Motto Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Translit.: Proletarii vsekh stran, soyedinyaytes'!) English: Workers of the world, unite! Anthem The Internationale (1922–1944) Hymn of the Soviet Union (1944–1991) The Soviet Union after World War II Capital Moscow Language(s) Russian, many others Religion None Government Federal socialist republic, single-party communist state General Secretary  - 1922–1953 (first) Joseph Stalin  - 1985–1991 (last) Mikhail Gorbachev Premier  - 1923–1924 (first) Vladimir Lenin  - 1991 (last) Ivan Silayev History  - Established December 30, 1922  - Disestablished December 26, 1991 Area  - 1991 22,402,200 km2 (8,649,538 sq mi) Population  - 1991 est. 293,047,571       Density 13.1 /km2  (33.9 /sq mi) Currency Soviet ruble (руб) (SUR) Internet TLD .su2 Calling code +7 Preceded by Succeeded by Russian SFSR Transcaucasian SFSR Ukrainian SSR Byelorussian SSR Russia Georgia Ukraine Moldova Belarus Armenia Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Estonia3 Latvia3 Lithuania3 1On December 21, 1991, eleven of the former socialist republics declared in Alma-Ata (with the 12th republic – Georgia – attending as an observer) that with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist. 2Assigned on September 19, 1990, existing onwards. 3The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania view themselves as continuous and unrelated to the respective Soviet republics. Russia views the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SSRs as legal constituent republics of the USSR and predecessors of the modern Baltic states. The Government of the United States and a number of other countries did not recognize the invasion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the USSR as legal inclusion.

Soviet Union

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the Soviet Union

Union government Constitution Government Council of People's Commissars Council of Ministers Cabinet of Ministers State Council Presidential Council Ministries Communist Party Communist Party Congress General Secretary Politburo Central Committee Secretariat Orgburo Leadership Leaders Premiers Cabinets President (List) Vice President Legislature Congress of Soviets Central Executive Committeee Supreme Soviet Soviet of the Union Soviet of Nationalities Presidium Congress of People's Deputies Speaker 1989 Legislative election Judiciary Law Supreme Court People's Court Procurator General History 1917-1927 1927-1953 1953-1985 1985-1991 Dissolution Ideology State Ideology Soviet democracy Marxism-Leninism Leninism Stalinism Economy Economy Agriculture Consumer goods Five-Year Plan Kosygin reform New Economic Policy Science and technology Stagnation Life and repression Society Demographics Education Family Phraseology Religion Transport Repression Censorship Human rights Great purge Gulag system Propaganda Population transfer Red Terror

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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲeʦkʲɪx səʦɨəlʲɪˈstʲiʨɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk]  ( listen), abbreviated СССР, SSSR), informally known as the Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz) or Soviet Russia, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed on the territory of most of the former Russian Empire in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.^[1]

The Soviet Union had a single-party political system dominated by the Communist Party.^[2] Although the USSR was nominally a union of Soviet republics (of which there were 15 after 1956) with the capital in Moscow, it was in actuality a highly centralized state with a planned economy. Much of Soviet society was overseen by national security agencies such as the KGB (which was active from 1954.)^[3]

The Soviet Union was founded in December 1922 when the Russian SFSR, which formed during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and emerged victorious in the ensuing Russian Civil War, unified with the Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, power was eventually consolidated by Joseph Stalin,^[4] who led the country through a large-scale industrialization with command economy and political repression.^[4][5] During World War II, in June 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, a country it had signed a non-aggression pact with. After four years of warfare, the Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, extending its influence into much of Eastern Europe and beyond.

The Soviet Union and its satellites from the Eastern Bloc were one of two participating factions in the Cold War, a global ideological and political struggle against the United States and its allies; the Soviet bloc ultimately lost, however, having been hit by economic standstill and both domestic and foreign political unrest, an event which marks the beginning of the post-war period.^[6][7] In the late 1980s the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the state with his policies of perestroika and glasnost, but the Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved in December 1991 after the abortive August coup attempt.^[8] Since then the Russian Federation has been exercising its rights and fulfilling its obligations.^[9]

Geography

The Soviet Union, with 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), was the world's largest state. Covering a sixth of the world's inhabited land, its size was comparable to that of North America. The western part (in Europe) accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the country's cultural and economic center. The eastern part (in Asia) extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less populated than the European part. It was over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) across (11 time zones) and almost 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) north to south. Its five climatic zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.

The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi). Two thirds of the Soviet border was coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey at the end of WWII.

The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. The Soviet Union's highest mountain was Communism Peak (today's Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, lay mainly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.

Demographics

USSR and FSU Population from 1961–2009.

1941 USSR geographic location of ethnicities

1974 USSR geographic location of ethnicities

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. It was the third most populous nation (after China and India) for decades. There were 23 cities with more than one million people each in the Soviet Union in 1989. The country's largest city and capital was Moscow with nine million inhabitants.

Ethnic groups

As a 1990 estimate, the majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).

Some nationality groups came into the empire voluntarily, others were brought in by force. Russians,^[10] Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties while other subjects of the empire did not. Due to multiple nationalities located in the same territory, national antagonisms developed over the years.

For many years, Soviet leaders maintained that the underlying causes of conflict between nationalities 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.

To increase literacy and mass education, the Soviets encouraged development and publication in many of the languages of minority groups. Russian became a required subject of study in all Soviet schools in 1938; however, in mainly non-Russian areas the chief language of instruction was the local language. This led to widespread bilingualism in the educated population, though smaller nationalities were often linguistically assimilated, in which the members of the nationality lost their historic language.^[11]

Religion

The Soviet Union was officially secular: atheism was supported in schools. The state was separated from church by the Decree of Council of People's Commissars on January 23, 1918. Prior to the country's dissolution, two-thirds of the Soviet population lacked religious belief while one-third of the people professed religious belief. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. About half of the people, including members of the CPSU and high-level government officials, professed atheism. Government persecution of Christianity continued undiminished until the fall of the Communist government. Only 500 churches, out of the 54,000 before the revolution, remained open in 1941. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly and was far less integral in city dwellers where Party control was strongest.

Language

While many constituent parts of the Soviet Union had their own official national languages, Russian was the official the language of interethnic communication (Russian: язык межнационального общения) and assumed de facto the role of official language.^[12]. It was used in industry, military, party, and state management.

Life expectancy

After the communist takeover of power the life expectancy for all age groups went up. The trend continued into the 60s, when the life expectancy in the Soviet Union went beyond the life expectancy in the United States. In 1964 the trend reversed. Life expectancy went down dramatically for men because of alcohol abuse and poor health care.^[13]

Emigration

Despite the strict rules that would prevent emigration, there were many Soviet citizens who wanted to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The desire to emigrate elsewhere applied especially to the Jewish community of USSR, as they often felt alienated by the anti-Semitic attitudes in society and sometimes even anti-Jewish campaigns of the Soviet State.^[14]

History

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled until March 1917, when the Russian Empire was overthrown and a short-lived Russian provisional government took power, to be overthrown in November 1917 by Vladimir Lenin.

From 1917 to 1922, the predecessor to the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was an independent country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially 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.

Revolution and the foundation of a Soviet state

Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was abolished in 1861, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar resisted attempts to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.

Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd in 1920.

A spontaneous popular uprising in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the "February Revolution" and the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Provisional Government, whose leaders intended to conduct elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue participating on the side of the Entente in World War I.

At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the "October Revolution", they seized power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers. But, by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Only after the long and bloody Russian Civil War was the new Soviet power secure. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included foreign intervention, the execution of Nicholas II and his family and the famine of 1921, which killed about 5 million.^[15] In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed and split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania.

Unification of the Soviet Republics

On December 28, 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR^[16] and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.^[17] These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations^[18] – Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory Petrovsky, Aleksandr Chervyakov^[19] respectively on December 30, 1922.

On February 1, 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).

The intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises.^[20] The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.^[21]

Stalin's rule

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow during its 1931 demolition. Organized religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union.

From its beginning years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).^[22] After the 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).

Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary because it ensured that 'capitalist exploitation' would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. 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. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" composed of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.

On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin to be the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, known by the acronym Rabkrin, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and out-maneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, by the end of the 1920s, established totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. While encompassing the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the course of the Revolution, it also aimed for building socialism in one country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization; in agriculture collective farms were established all over the country.

Famines occurred, causing millions of deaths and surviving kulaks were politically persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin's Great Purge resulted in execution or detainment of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. A wide range of death tolls was suggested, from as many as 60 million kulaks being killed (suggested by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) to as few as 700 thousand (according to Soviet news sources).

According to the declassified Soviet archives, during the Great Purge in 1937 and 1938, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day.^[23] 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.

The 1930s

The early 1930s saw closer cooperation between the West and the USSR. From 1932 to 1934, the Soviet Union participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established. In September 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists. The Nationalists were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new Soviet Constitution. The constitution was seen as a personal triumph for Stalin, who on this occasion was described by Pravda as "genius of the new world, the wisest man of the epoch, the great leader of communism." By contrast, western historians and historians from former Soviet occupied countries have seen the constitution as a meaningless propaganda document.

The late 1930s saw a shift towards the Axis powers. In 1938 and 1939, armed forces of the USSR won several decisive victories during border clashes with the armed forces of the Japanese Empire. In 1938, after the United Kingdom and France concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the USSR dealt with Germany as well.

World War II

The USSR dealt with Germany both militarily and economically during extensive talks and by concluding the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement. The conclusion of the nonaggression pact made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November of the same year, unable to force the Republic of Finland into agreement to move its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad by diplomatic means, Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland. On April 1941, USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

Although it has been debated whether the Soviet Union had the intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough,^[24] Germany itself broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and started what was known in the USSR as the "Great Patriotic War". The Red Army stopped the initial German offensive during the Battle of Moscow. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, was a major defeat for the Germans and became a major turning point of the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The same year, the USSR, in fulfilment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945^[25] and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on August 9, 1945.^[26] This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people in the war.^[27] Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged victorious from the conflict and became an acknowledged military superpower.

Left to right: Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Once denied diplomatic recognition by the free world, the Soviet Union had official relations with practically all nations of the world by the late 1940s. The Soviet Union also had progressed from being an outsider in international organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of the world'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 world's two superpowers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see Eastern Bloc), military strength, economic 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.

The Cold War

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 post-war reconstruction in the countries of Eastern Europe while turning them into Soviet satellite states, founded the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), 1949–1991, was an economic organization of communist states and a kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent to—but more geographically inclusive than—the European Economic Community.^[28] Later, the 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 enemies.

Post-Stalin period

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. In the absence of an acceptable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly. Nikita Khrushchev, who had won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression in 1956 and eased repressive controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.

Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into satellite states. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956. In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's rapprochement with the West and what Mao perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism led to the Sino-Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Communist movement and Communist regimes in Albania and Cambodia choosing to ally with China in place of the USSR. During this period, the Soviet Union continued to realize scientific and technological pioneering exploits; to launch the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; a living dog, Laika; and later, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into Earth's orbit. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, and Alexey Leonov became the first person to walk in space on March 18, 1965. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. 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. Khrushchev was retired from power in 1964.

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. In 1968 the Soviet Union and members of its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the Prague Spring reforms.

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna.

Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the West (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) while at the same time building up Soviet military strength.

In October 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. The prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill" , with an aging and ossified top political leadership.

Reforms of Gorbachev and collapse of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev in one-on-one discussions with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

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. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit from selling their oil, so that the USSR's hard currency reserves became depleted.^[29]

After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, transitional figures with deep roots in Brezhnevite tradition, beginning in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy (see Perestroika, Glasnost) and the party leadership. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. With the Soviet Union in bad economic shape and its satellite states in eastern Europe abandoning communism, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War. 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.

Soviet troops withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988

In 1988, the Soviet Union abandoned its nine-year war with Afghanistan and began to withdraw forces from the country. In the late 1980s, Gorbachev refused to send military support to defend the Soviet Union's former satellite states, resulting in multiple communist regimes in those states being forced from power. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East Germany and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain took the final blow.

In the late 1980s, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, citing Article 72 of the USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede.^[30] On April 7, 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of that republic's residents vote for secession on a referendum.^[31] Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws".

In 1989, the Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about half of the population) convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Congress. On June 12, 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued throughout 1991 as constituent republics slowly became de facto independent.

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 nine out of 15 republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and, in the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by eight republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation.

Yeltsin stands on a tank to defy the August Coup in 1991.

The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline Communist Party members of the government and the KGB, who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin—who had publicly opposed it—came out as a hero while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared restoration of full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example), while the other twelve republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union.

On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the 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 summit of Alma-Ata also agreed on several other practical measures consequential to the extinction of the Union. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev yielded to the inevitable and resigned as the president of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that until then were vested in the presidency over to Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia.

The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, recognized the bankruptcy and 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 were absorbed by the newly independent states.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, Russia was internationally recognized^[32] to be the legal successor to the Soviet state on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt, and claimed overseas Soviet properties as its own. Since then the Russian Federation has been exercising its rights and fulfilling its obligations.

Government and politics

The 1983 annual military parade in Moscow, commemorating the 66th anniversary of the October Revolution. The banner at the top reads: "Glory to the CPSU!"

There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the state systems of Soviets and ministries as well as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only legal party and the ultimate policymaker in the country, known under the name of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) before the 19th Party Congress in 1952.^[33][34]

At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. The Central Committee in turn voted for a Politburo (called Presidium between 1952–1966), Secretariat and Secretary General (First Secretary in 1953-1966), position that came to prominence with Stalin's rise to power. Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the Secretary General, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They weren't controlled by the mass of the party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism, demanding strict subordination to the higher bodies, and the elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above.^[33][34]

The Grand Kremlin Palace, seat of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in 1982

The Supreme Soviet (known before 1936 as the Central Executive Committee), nearly unanimously voted for by the population in uncontested and less than secret elections, nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, de facto was a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions imposed on it by the party. It elected a Presidium to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court, the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as the Council of People's Commissars), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society.^[33][34]

State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of the CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees, local Soviets and executive committees. While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary.^[33][34]

The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state largely through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU, the more important they were the higher their position in the party hierarchy. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin in 1941-1953 and Khrushchev in 1958-1964 were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev the party head became prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later Secretaries General for at least some part of their tenure in office occupied the position of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, nominal head of state, albeit largely ceremonial. The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations.^[33][34]

In practice, however, the control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the state bureaucracy pursuing different interests, at times in conflict with the party. Neither was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned.^[33][34]

The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies) played important role in the Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Stalinist terror. After the death of Stalin the state security police was brought under strict party control. Under Yury Andropov, KGB chairman in 1967-1982 and Secretary General in 1982-1983, the KGB, engaging in the suppression of political dissent and maintaining an extensive network of informers, reasserted itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high party officials in the late 1970s-early 1980s.^[33]

The Soviet constitutions, which were promulgated in 1918, 1924, 1936 and 1977, didn't limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers, the fusion of executive and legislative functions was pervasive. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions. No settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggle took place in the Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a coup in the Central Committee. With the only exception of Khrushchev, all Soviet party leaders before Gorbachev died in office.^[33]

An armored personnel carrier surrounded by anti-coup demonstrators in Moscow during the 1991 August Coup

In 1988-1990, facing considerable opposition, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from the highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, majority of whose members were directly elected by the population in competitive elections held in March 1989. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, much stronger than before, and, although still being largely conservative, for the first time since the 1920s refused to rubber-stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990 Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union, concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed Cabinet of Ministers, to himself. Tensions were growing between the union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists, led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and Communist Party hardliners. On August 19–21, 1991, a group of hardliners staged an abortive coup attempt. Following its failure Gorbachev resigned as Secretary General, only remaining Soviet President for the final months of the existence of the union, and the USSR Supreme Soviet suspended the CPSU.^[33][34]

Judicial system

The judiciary was not independent from the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union utilized the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where judge, procurator, and defense attorney work collaboratively to establish the truth.^[35]

Soviet Socialist Republics

#	Republic	Map of the Union Republics between 1956–1991
1	Russian SFSR
2	Ukrainian SSR
4	Uzbek SSR
5	Kazakh SSR
3	Belorussian SSR
7	Azerbaijan SSR
6	Georgian SSR
12	Tajik SSR
9	Moldavian SSR
11	Kirghiz SSR
8	Lithuanian SSR
14	Turkmen SSR
13	Armenian SSR
10	Latvian SSR
15	Estonian SSR

Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), although the rule of the highly cenralized Communist Party made Soviet federalism merely nominal.^[33] The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was signed in December 1922 by four founding republics, the RSFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs were formed from parts of the RSFSR's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSR. In 1929 the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR. With the constitution of 1936 the constituents of the Transcaucasian SFSR, namely the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSRs, were elevated to union republics, whereas the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were split off from the RSFSR. In August 1940 the Soviet Union formed the Moldavian SSR from parts of the Ukrainian SSR and parts of Bessarabia annexed from Romania, as well as annexed the Baltic states as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs. The Karelo-Finnish SSR was split off from the RSFSR in March 1940 and merged back in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991 there were 15 union republics (see the map below).

In March 1990 the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR declared independence, followed by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in April 1991. Although the symbolic right of the union republics to secede was nominally guaranteed by the constitution and the union treaty,^[33] the union authorities at first refused to recognize it. After the August coup attempt most of the other republics followed suit. The Soviet Union ultimately recognized the secession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on September 6, 1991. The remaining republics were recognized as independent with the union's final dissolution in December 1991.

Economy

The DneproGES, one of many hydroelectric power stations in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union became the first country that adopted a planned economy, whereby production and distribution of goods were to be centralized and directed by the government. The first Bolshevik experience with command economy was the policy of War Communism, involving nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate money circulation, as well as private enterprises and free trade.^[37] As it had aggravated a severe economic collapse caused by the war, in 1921 Lenin replaced War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), legalizing free trade and private ownership of smaller businesses. The economy subsequently recovered fairly quickly.^[37]

Following a lengthy debate among the members of Politburo over the course of economic development, by 1928-1929, upon gaining the upper hand in the power struggle, Joseph Stalin had abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. The resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which greatly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s.^[37] Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world.^[38][39] As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian economy into a great industrial power, and the basis was provided for its emergence as a superpower after recovering from World War II.^[40] During the war the Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation and subsequently required extensive reconstruction.^[41]

A wide range of industries constituted the Soviet industrial sector in the later decades, including machine-building and metal-working, metallurgy, chemicals, petroleum and natural gas, coal mining, forestry, defense industry, textiles, food processing, and construction.^[42][43] By 1980, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest industrial capacity with 20 percent of total world industrial output, leading the world in producing oil, cast iron, steel, coke, mineral fertilizers, locomotives, tractors, and cement.^[44]

By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively autarkic; for most of the period up until the creation of Comecon, only a very small share of domestic products were traded internationally.^[45] After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. Still the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and state monopoly on the foreign trade.^[46] Grain and sophisticated consumer manufactures became major import articles from around 1960s.^[45] Petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a variety of manufactured goods, primarily machinery, arms and military equipment, were exported from the country.^[43][45] In the 1970s-1980s, the Soviet Union heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency.^[45] At the peak level in 1988, it was the largest producer and second largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.

The Soviet Union placed great emphasis on science and technology within its economy,^[47] however the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as producing the world's first space satellite, typically were the military responsibility.^[42] During the arms race of the Cold War the Soviet economy was burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied by the powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry. At the same time the Soviet Union became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Significant amounts of the Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.^[45]

Since the 1930s and until its collapse in the late 1980s, the way the Soviet economy operated had remained essentially unchanged. The economy was formally directed by central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized into five-year plans. In practice, however, the plans were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ad hoc intervention by superiors. All key economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were normally denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credits were discouraged, but widespread. Final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice the actual prices were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links were widespread.^[37][48]

A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and healthcare. In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defense were assigned higher priority than consumer goods production.^[42] Consumer goods, in particular outside large cities, were often in short supply, of poor quality and limited choice, as under command economy consumers' preferences wielded almost no influence over production, changing demands of the population with growing money incomes couldn't be matched by supplies at rigidly fixed prices.^[50] A massive unplanned second economy existed alongside the planned one at low levels, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. Legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.^[37][48]

Although statistics of the Soviet economy are notoriously unreliable and its economic growth is difficult to estimate precisely,^[51][52] by most accounts the economy continued to expand until mid eighties. During 1950s and 1960s the Soviet economy performed with comparatively high growth rates and was catching up with the West.^[53] However, after 1970 the growth, while still positive, steadily declined, much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite a rapid increase in the capital stock, (the rate of increase in capital was only surpassed by Japan).^[37]

Overall, between 1960 and 1989, the growth rate of per capita income in the Soviet Union was slightly above world average (based on 102 countries). However, given the very high level of investment in physical capital, high percentage of people with a secondary education, and low population growth the Soviet economy should have grown much faster. According to Stanley Fischer and William Easterly the Soviet growth record was among "the worst in the world". By their calculation per capita income of Soviet Union in 1989 should have been twice as high as it was, if investment, education and population had their typical effect on growth. The authors attribute this poor performance to low productivity of capital in the Soviet Union.^[54]

In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev pushed to reform the economy with his program of Perestroika in an attempt to revitalize it. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises, but hadn't yet allowed it to be replaced with market incentives, ultimately resulting in a sharp decline in production output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, property was still largely state-owned until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.^[37][50] For the most of the period after World War II and up to its collapse, the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world by GDP (PPP),^[55] though in per capita terms the Soviet GDP was behind that of the First World countries.^[56]

Culture

Worker and Kolkhoz Woman over the northern entrance to the All-Soviet Exhibition Centre in Moscow (today the All-Russia Exhibition Centre)

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. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people. On the other hand, hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists were exiled or executed, and their work banned, for example Nikolai Gumilev (shot) and Yevgeny Zamyatin (banned).^[57]

The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.

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. Mikhail Bulgakov's works). Many writers were imprisoned and killed.^[58] Those who were not murdered were often banned, for example Anna Akhmatova and Alexander Solzhenytsin. Also, religious people were persecuted and either sent to Gulags or were murdered by the thousands.^[59] The ban on the Orthodox Church was temporarily lifted in the 1940s, in order to rally support for the Soviet war against the invading forces of Germany. Under Stalin, prominent symbols that were not in line with communist ideology were destroyed, such as Orthodox Churches and Tsarist buildings.

Following the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, censorship was diminished. Greater experimentation in art forms became permissible once again, with the result that more sophisticated and subtly critical work began to be produced. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. An underground dissident literature, known as samizdat, developed during this late period. In architecture the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.

In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost significantly expanded freedom of expression in the media and press.^[60]

Notes

References and further reading

See also List of primary and secondary sources on the Cold War

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.

External links

• Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey.
• Documents and other forms of media from the Soviet Union: 1917–1991.
• A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former)
• Soviet Union Exhibit at Global Museum on Communism with essay by Richard Pipes
• The Soviet Union

Republics of the Soviet Union Soviet Union Principal Armenian SSR · Azerbaijan SSR · Byelorussian SSR · Estonian SSR · Georgian SSR · Kazakh SSR · Kirghiz SSR · Latvian SSR · Lithuanian SSR · Moldavian SSR · Russian SFSR · Tajik SSR · Turkmen SSR · Ukrainian SSR · Uzbek SSR Short-lived Abkhazian SSR · Karelo-Finnish SSR · Transcaucasian SFSR

Autonomous Republics of the Soviet Union Soviet Union Abkhaz ASSR (1930–1992) · Adjar ASSR (1921–1990) · Bashkir ASSR (1919–1990) · Buryat ASSR (1923–1990; Buryat–Mongol ASSR up to 1958) · Chechen-Ingush ASSR (1936–1944; 1957–1990) · Chuvash ASSR (1925–1990) · Crimean ASSR (1921–1945; 1991–1992) · Dagestan ASSR (1921–1991) · Gorno-Altai ASSR (1990–1991) · Kabardin ASSR (1944–1957) · Kabardino-Balkar ASSR (1936–1944; 1957–1991) · Kalmyk ASSR (1935–1943; 1958–1990) · Karachay-Cherkess ASSR (1990–1991) · Karakalpak ASSR (1932–1992) · Karelian ASSR (1923–1940; 1956–1991) · Kazakh ASSR (Kirghiz ASSR) (1920–1936) · Komi ASSR (1936–1990) · Mari ASSR (1936–1990) · Moldavian ASSR (1924–1940) · Mordovian ASSR (1934–1990) · Mountain ASSR (1920–1924) · Nakhchivan ASSR (1924–1990) · North Ossetian ASSR (1936–1990) · Tajik ASSR (1924–1929) · Tatar ASSR (1920–1990) · Turkestan ASSR (1918–1924) · Tuva ASSR (1961–1990) · Udmurt ASSR (1934–1991) · Volga German ASSR (1918–1941) · Yakut ASSR (1922–1990)

Autonomous oblasts of the Soviet Union Soviet Union Adyghe AO · Chechen AO · Chehen–Ingush AO · Gorno-Altai AO · Gorno-Badakhshan AO · Jewish AO · Karachay-Cherkess AO · Khakas AO · Nagorno-Karabakh AO · South Ossetian AO · Tuvan AO

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