This changed on January 1st, 2009, when these were merged into four large communes:
In addition, some parts of Greenland are outside a commune, namely:
As of January 1st, 2008, 218 people lived there.
The island has many mountains. All of the cities are on the coast, because everywhere else is covered by a big layer of ice. The major cities are Nuuk, Sisimiut, Ilulissat, and Qaqortoq.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (short for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) was a single-party Marxist–Leninist state. It existed for 69 years, from 1922 until 1991. It was the first country to declare itself socialist and build towards a communist society. It was a union of 14 Soviet socialist republics and one Soviet federative socialist republic (Russia).
The Soviet Union was created about five years after the Russian Revolution. It was announced after Vladimir Lenin overthrew Alexander Kerensky as Russian leader. The communist government developed industry and over time became a major, powerful union. The largest country in the Union was Russia, and Kazakhstan was the second. The capital city of the Soviet Union was Moscow. The Soviet Union expanded its political control greatly after World War II. It took over the whole of Eastern Europe. Those countries were not made part of the Soviet Union, but they were controlled by the Soviet Union indirectly. These countries, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, were called satellite states.
The top-level committee which made the laws was the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. In practice, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader and most important decision-maker in their system of government.
Although the constitution said the Republics could leave the Union if they wanted, it was a completely centralized government, with no states' rights for the member countries.
The Union was formed with the idea to give everyone equal social and economic rights (equality). There was virtually no private property—everything belonged to the state (public property was an idea discussed by Karl Marx, and formed the basis for socialism) 'Soviets', or workers' councils, were created by the working class to lead the socialist state democratically, but they soon lost power with the rise of Stalinism. The Union was successful in many fields, putting the first man and satellite into space and winning World War II alongside the United States and United Kingdom. However, its centralized government found innovation and change difficult to handle. The Union collapsed in 1991, partly due to the efforts at reform by its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union was made of 15 republics. These were either "Soviet Socialist Republics", or "Soviet Socialist Federal Republics". Each republic was independent and handled its own cultural affairs. Each also had the right to leave the union, which they did in 1991.
The "Federal Republics" were different in that they had more autonomy, and were made up of states themselves. These were often called "Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics". There were a number of them. Most of them still exist; though they are now republics, within the independent state. The "Tatar ASSR" turned into the "Republic of Tatarstan", for example (It is located around Kazan).
The Soviet Union at its largest size in 1991, with , was the world's biggest country. Covering a sixth of the world's lived in land, its size was comparable to North America's. 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 lived in than the western part. It was over across (11 time zones) and almost north to south. Its five climatic (different weather, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure) zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.
The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over in 1991. 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 it is called the Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan measured at . The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, was mostly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.
The last Russian Tsar (emperor), Nicholas II, ruled Russia until March 1917, when the Russian Empire was taken over and a short-lived "provisional government" replaced it, led by Alexander Kerensky and soon to be overthrown in November by Bolsheviks.
From 1917 to 1922, the country that came before the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was its own country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially created in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (also known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by the communist Bolshevik parties.
Extreme government-changing activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was removed in 1861, its removal was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants (poor agricultural workers) and served to encourage changers (revolutionaries). A parliament (legislative assembly)—the State Duma—was created in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar protested people trying to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Rebellion continued and was aggravated during World War I by failure and food shortages in popular cities.
A rebellion in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, caused the "February Revolution" and the removal of the government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian "Provisional government", whose leaders intended to have elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue war 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 took power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice (peace) with the Central Powers. In March, after more fighting, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
In the long and bloody Russian Civil War, the new Soviet power won. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included the Siberian Intervention and other foreign interference, the killing of Nicholas II and his family and the famine in 1921, which killed about 5 million. 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, which had all escaped the empire during the civil war.
On 28 December 1922, people from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were made true by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations.