During the Cold War, the informal term "Soviet Empire" referred to the Soviet Union's influence over a number of smaller nations who were nominally independent but subject to direct military force if they tried to leave the Soviet system; see Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring.
Though the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor and declared itself anti-imperialist, critics[1][2] argue that it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. Some scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states.[3] It has also been argued that the USSR practiced colonialism as did other imperial powers.[4]
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The Soviet Empire was said to consist of the following:
These countries were the closest allies of the Soviet Union. They were members of the Comecon, a Soviet-led economic community founded in 1949. In addition, the ones located in Eastern Europe were also members of the Warsaw Pact. They were sometimes called the Eastern bloc in English and were widely viewed as Soviet satellite states.
North Korea was a Soviet ally, but always followed a highly isolationist foreign policy and therefore it did not join the Comecon or any other international organization of Communist states.
A large number of countries in the Third World had pro-Soviet governments during the Cold War. In the political terminology of the Soviet Union, these were "countries moving along the socialist road of development", as opposed to the more advanced "countries of developed socialism", which were mostly located in Easten Europe, but also included Vietnam and Cuba. Most received some aid, either military or economic, from the Soviet Union, and were influenced by it to varying degrees. Sometimes, their support for the Soviet Union eventually stopped, for various reasons; in some cases the pro-Soviet government lost power, in other cases the pro-Soviet forces were overthrown by military coups promoted by the United States (such as in Chile), in some cases the pro-Soviet forces gained power by military aid from the Soviet Union (such as in Vietnam), while in other cases the same government remained in power but changed its relations with the Soviet Union.
Some of these countries were not Communist states. They are marked in italic.
Some Communist states were openly opposed to the Soviet Union and many of its policies. Though their forms of government may have been similar, they were completely sovereign from the USSR and held only formal ties. Relations were often tense, sometimes even to the point of armed conflict.
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