# Republics of the Soviet Union

Eastern Bloc :
Republics of the USSR
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Byelorussia
Estonia
Georgia
Kazakhstan
Karelia-Finland (1940–1956)
Kirghizia
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldavia
Russia
Tajikistan
Turkmenia
Transcaucasia (1922–1936)
Ukraine
Uzbekistan :
Allied and satellite states
Afghanistan (1978–1989)
Albania (until 1961)
Angola
Benin
Bulgaria
China (until 1961)
Congo
Cuba
Czechoslovakia
East Germany (until 1989)
Ethiopia
Grenada (1979–1983)
Hungary
Kampuchea
Laos
Mongolia
Mozambique
North Korea
Poland (until 1989)
Romania (until 1989)
Somalia (until 1977)
South Yemen
Vietnam (North Vietnam, PRG)
Yugoslavia (until 1948) :
Related organizations
Warsaw Pact
Comecon
Cominform
World Federation of Trade Unions
World Federation of Democratic Youth :
Opposition
Anti-Soviet partisans
Albania
Bulgaria
Croatia
Poland
Romania
Serbia
Ukraine
Guerrilla war in the Baltic states
Soviet occupation
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Operation Jungle
Protests and uprisings
Poland 1944–1989
Poznań 1956
1980–89
Plzeň 1953
East Germany 1953
Georgia 1956
Hungary 1956
Novocherkassk 1962
Prague 1968
Invasion
Moscow
Czechoslovakia 1976–1990
Romania 1977
Kazakhstan 1986
Brașov 1987
Tbilisi 1989
Ukraine 1989–1991
Baku 1990
Lithuania 1991
Riga 1991
Dissent
Soviet
Poland
East Germany
to Hong Kong
North Korea :
Cold War events
Marshall Plan
Czechoslovak coup
Tito–Stalin split
Berlin Blockade
Korean War
Secret Speech
Sino-Soviet split
Albanian–Soviet split
De-satellization of the Socialist Republic of Romania
Berlin Wall
Cuban Missile Crisis
Vietnam War
Cuban intervention in Angola
Afghan War
1980 Moscow Olympics
1984 Los Angeles Olympics
Gulf War :
Fall
Singing Revolution
Polish Round Table Agreement
Revolutions of 1989
Fall of the Berlin Wall
January Events
Barricades in Latvia
Breakup of Yugoslavia
Yugoslav Wars
End of the Soviet Union
Post-Soviet conflicts
Fall of communism in Albania
Dissolution of Czechoslovakia :
vte :
In the Soviet Union, a Union Republic (Russian: Сою́зная Респу́блика, romanized: Soyúznaya Respúblika) or unofficially a Republic of the USSR was a constituent federated political entity with a system of government called a Soviet republic, which was officially defined in the 1977 constitution as "a sovereign Soviet socialist state which has united with the other Soviet republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and whose sovereignty is limited by membership in the Union. As a result of its status as a sovereign state, the Union Republic de jure had the right to enter into relations with foreign states, conclude treaties with them and exchange diplomatic and consular representatives and participate in the activities of international organizations (including membership in international organizations). The Union Republics were perceived as national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 by a treaty between the Soviet republics of Byelorussia, Russian SFSR (RSFSR), Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine, by which they became its constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). For most of its history, the USSR was a one-party state led by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Key functions of the USSR were highly centralized in Moscow until its final years, despite its nominal structure as a federation of republics; the light decentralization reforms during the era of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (voice-ness, as in freedom of speech) conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev as part of the Helsinki Accords are cited as one of the factors which led to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 as result of the Cold War and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, a relic of the Soviet-Finnish War (the Winter War), became the only union republic to be deprived of its status in 1956. The decision to downgrade Karelia to an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR was made unilaterally by the central government without consulting its population. The official basis for downgrading the status of the republic was the changes that had occurred in the national composition of its population (about 80% of the inhabitants were Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians), as well as the need to reduce the state apparatus, the cost of maintaining which in 1955 amounted to 19.6 million rubles.

## Overview

Chapter 8 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution is titled as the "Soviet Union is a union state". Article 70 stated that the union was founded on principles "socialist federalism" as a result of free self-determination of nation and volunteer association of equal in rights soviet socialist republics. Article 71 listed all of 15 union republics that united into the Soviet Union.
According to Article 76 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, a Union Republic was a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with other Soviet Republics in the USSR. Article 78 of the Constitution stated that the territory of the union republic cannot be changed without its agreement. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".
In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). All of them, with the exception of the Russian SFSR (until 1990), had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.
In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for separate branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense, allowing them to be recognized as de jure independent states in international law. This allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, (as well as the USSR as a whole) to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945.
The Soviet currency Soviet ruble banknotes all included writings in national languages of all the 15 union republics.
All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, with ten of them (all except the Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine) being very loosely organized under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Baltic states assert that their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 (as the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian SSRs) under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was illegal, and that they therefore remained independent countries under Soviet occupation. Their position is supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United States. In contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate.
Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation. In accordance with provisions present in its Constitution (versions adopted in 1924, 1936 and 1977), each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Throughout the Cold War, this right was widely considered to be meaningless; however, the corresponding Article 72 of the 1977 Constitution was used in December 1991 to effectively dissolve the Soviet Union, when Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus seceded from the Union. Although the Union was created under an initial ideological appearance of forming a supranational union, it never de facto functioned as one; an example of the ambiguity is that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s officially had its own foreign minister, but that office did not exercise any true sovereignty apart from that of the union. The Constitution of the Soviet Union in its various iterations defined the union as a federation with the right of the republics to secede. This constitutional status led to the possibility of the parade of sovereignties once the republic with de facto (albeit not de jure) dominance over the other republics, the Russian one, developed a prevailing political notion asserting that it would be better off if it seceded. The de facto dominance of the Russian republic is the reason that various historians (for example, Dmitri Volkogonov and others) have asserted that the union was a unitary state in fact albeit not in law.$^{:71,483}$
In practice, the USSR was a highly centralised entity from its creation in 1922 until the mid-1980s when political forces unleashed by reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev resulted in the loosening of central control and its ultimate dissolution. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, the political foundation of the Soviet Union was formed by the Soviets (Councils) of People's Deputies. These existed at all levels of the administrative hierarchy, with the former "countries" and other regions brought into the union referred to as soviets during their time as republics and with the Soviet Union as a whole under the nominal control of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, located in Moscow within the Russian SFSR.
Along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the parallel party organs, and appointments of all party and state officials required approval of the central organs of the party.
Each republic had its own unique set of state symbols: a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990, an anthem. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin.
* A hall in Bishkek's Soviet-era Lenin Museum decorated with the flags of Soviet Republics
* Poster of the unity of the Soviet republics in the late 1930s. All republics, except Russia, are shown with their respective traditional clothes.
* Poster of the unity of the Soviet republics in 1946. Note that the map also points out the Karelo-Finnish SSR capital, Petrozavodsk.

## Union Republics of the Soviet Union

The number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. From 1956 until its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. (In 1956, the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, created in 1940, was absorbed into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.) Rather than listing the republics in alphabetical order, the republics were listed in constitutional order (which roughly corresponded to their population and economic power when the republics were formed). However, particularly by the last decades of the Soviet Union, the constitutional order did not correspond to order either by population or economic power.
Some of the union republics were autonomous republics before promotion. Soviet historiography considered the establishment of an autonomous republic to be the start of national autonomy and the succeeding union republic a continuation of the same entity in such cases.
| Name | Capital | Official languages | Established | Union Republic status | Sovereignty | Independence | Population (1989) | Pop. % | Area (km$^2$) (1991) | Area % | Post-Soviet and de facto states | No. |
| Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic | Yerevan | Armenian, Russian | 2 December 1920 | 5 December 1936 | 23 August 1990 | 21 September 1991 | 3,287,700 | 1.15 | 29,800 | 0.13 | Armenia | 13 |
| Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic | Baku | Azerbaijani, Russian | 28 April 1920 | 5 December 1936 | 23 September 1989 | 18 October 1991 | 7,037,900 | 2.45 | 86,600 | 0.39 | Azerbaijan | 7 |
| Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic | Minsk | Byelorussian, Russian | 31 July 1920 | 30 December 1922 | 27 July 1990 | 25 August 1991 | 10,151,806 | 3.54 | 207,600 | 0.93 | Belarus | 3 |
| Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic | Tallinn | Estonian, Russian | 21 July 1940 | 6 August 1940 | 16 November 1988 | 8 May 1990 | 1,565,662 | 0.55 | 45,226 | 0.20 | Estonia | 15 |
| Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic | Tbilisi | Georgian, Russian | 25 February 1921 | 5 December 1936 | 18 November 1989 | 9 April 1991 | 5,400,841 | 1.88 | 69,700 | 0.31 | Georgia Abkhazia South Ossetia | 6 |
| Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic | Alma-Ata | Kazakh, Russian | 26 August 1920 | 5 December 1936 | 25 October 1990 | 16 December 1991 | 16,711,900 | 5.83 | 2,717,300 | 12.24 | Kazakhstan | 5 |
| Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic | Frunze | Kirghiz, Russian | 11 February 1926 | 5 December 1936 | 15 December 1990 | 31 August 1991 | 4,257,800 | 1.48 | 198,500 | 0.89 | Kyrgyzstan | 11 |
| Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic | Riga | Latvian, Russian | 21 July 1940 | 5 August 1940 | 28 July 1989 | 4 May 1990 | 2,666,567 | 0.93 | 64,589 | 0.29 | Latvia | 10 |
| Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic | Vilnius | Lithuanian, Russian | 21 July 1940 | 3 August 1940 | 18 May 1989 | 11 March 1990 | 3,689,779 | 1.29 | 65,200 | 0.29 | Lithuania | 8 |
| Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic | Kishinev | Moldavian, Russian | 12 October 1924 | 2 August 1940 | 23 June 1990 | 27 August 1991 | 4,337,600 | 1.51 | 33,843 | 0.15 | Moldova Transnistria | 9 |
| Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic | Moscow | Russian | 7 November 1917 | 30 December 1922 | 12 June 1990 | 12 December 1991 | 147,386,000 | 51.40 | 17,075,400 | 76.62 | Russia | 1 |
| Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic | Dushanbe | Tajik, Russian | 14 October 1924 | 5 December 1929 | 24 August 1990 | 9 September 1991 | 5,112,000 | 1.78 | 143,100 | 0.64 | Tajikistan | 12 |
| Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic | Ashkhabad | Turkmen, Russian | 13 May 1925 | 13 May 1925 | 27 August 1990 | 27 October 1991 | 3,522,700 | 1.23 | 488,100 | 2.19 | Turkmenistan | 14 |
| Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic | Kiev | Ukrainian, Russian | 10 March 1919 | 30 December 1922 | 16 July 1990 | 24 August 1991 | 51,706,746 | 18.03 | 603,700 | 2.71 | Ukraine | 2 |
| Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic | Tashkent | Uzbek, Russian | 5 December 1924 | 5 December 1924 | 20 June 1990 | 1 September 1991 | 19,906,000 | 6.94 | 447,400 | 2.01 | Uzbekistan | 4 |

### Short-lived Union Republics of the Soviet Union

| Emblem | Name | Flag | Capital | Titular nationality | Established | Union Republic status | Abolished | Population | Area (km$^2$) | Soviet successor |
| | Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic | | Petrozavodsk | Karelians, Finns | 25 July 1923 | 31 March 1940 | 16 July 1956 | 651,300 (1959) | 172,400 | Russian SFSR ( Karelian ASSR) |
| | Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic | | Tiflis | Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians | 12 March 1922 | 30 December 1922 | 5 December 1936 | 5,861,600 (1926) | 186,100 | Armenian SSR Azerbaijan SSR Georgian SSR |

### Non-union Soviet republics

| Emblem | Name | Capital | Created | Defunct | Population | Area (km$^2$) | Soviet successor |
| | Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia$^a$ | Sukhumi | 1921 | 1931 | 201,016 | 86,000 | Georgian SSR ( Abkhaz ASSR) |
| | Bukharan People's Soviet Republic | Bukhara | 1920 | 1924 | 2,000,000 | 182,193 | Uzbek SSR |
| | Khorezm People's Soviet Republic | Khiva | 1920 | 1924 | 800,000 | 62,200 | Turkmen SSR Uzbek SSR |
| | Far Eastern Republic | Verkhneudinsk Chita | 1920 | 1922 | | | Russian SFSR |
| | Tuvan People's Republic | Kyzyl | 1921 | 1944 | | | Russian SFSR ( Tuvan ASSR) |
| $^a$ Abkhazia's status in relation to the Georgian SSR as a "treaty republic" was never clear or well-defined, making its status as a separate republic disputed. |||||||||
The Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. The Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic (Soviet Socialist Republic of Taurida) was also proclaimed in 1918, but did not become a union republic and was made into an autonomous republic of the RSFSR, although the Crimean Tatars had a relative majority until the 1930s or 1940s according to censuses. When the Tuvan People's Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, and was instead established as an autonomous republic of the RSFSR.
The leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected. During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic.

### Republics not recognized by the Soviet Union

| Emblem | Name | Flag | Capital | Official languages | Independence from SSR declared | Independence from USSR declared | Population | Area (km$^2$) | Post-Soviet subject |
| | Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic | | Tiraspol | Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan | 2 September 1990 | 25 August 1991 | 680,000 (1989) | 4,163 (1989) | Transnistria |

### Other defunct Soviet states

* Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets (1917–1918) → Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1918)
* Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919)
* Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia (1919–1920)
* Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (1920)
* Polish Soviet Socialist Republic (1920)
* East Polish Soviet Socialist Republic (1990)

## Autonomous Republics of the Soviet Union

Several of the Union Republics themselves, most notably Russia, were further subdivided into Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs). Though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines.
According to the constitution of the USSR, in case of a union republic voting on leaving the Soviet Union, autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs had the right, by means of a referendum, to independently resolve whether they will stay in the USSR or leave with the seceding union republic, as well as to raise the issue of their state-legal status.

## Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Starting in the late 1980s, under the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet government undertook a program of political reforms (glasnost and perestroika) intended to liberalise and revitalise the Union. These measures, however, had a number of unintended political and social effects. Political liberalisation allowed the governments of the union republics to openly invoke the principles of democracy and nationalism to gain legitimacy. In addition, the loosening of political restrictions led to fractures within the Communist Party which resulted in a reduced ability to govern the Union effectively. The rise of nationalist and right-wing movements, notably led by Boris Yeltsin in Russia, in the previously homogeneous political system undermined the Union's foundations. With the central role of the Communist Party removed from the constitution, the Party lost its control over the State machinery and was banned from operating after an attempted coup d'état.
Throughout this period of turmoil, the Soviet government attempted to find a new structure that would reflect the increased authority of the republics. Some autonomous republics, like Tatarstan, Checheno-Ingushetia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria, Gagauzia sought the union statute in the New Union Treaty. Efforts to found a New Union Treaty, however, proved unsuccessful and the republics began to secede from the Union. By 6 September 1991, the Soviet Union's State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania bringing the number of union republics down to 12. On 8 December 1991, the remaining leaders of the republics signed the Belavezha Accords which agreed that the USSR would be dissolved and replaced with a Commonwealth of Independent States. On 25 December, President Gorbachev announced his resignation and turned all executive powers over to Yeltsin. The next day the Council of Republics voted to dissolve the Union. Since then, the republics have been governed independently with some reconstituting themselves as liberal parliamentary republics and others, particularly in Central Asia, devolving into highly autocratic states under the leadership of the old Party elite.