Soviet Union

The **Soviet Union** (Russian: Советский Союз), officially the **Union of Soviet Socialist Republics** (Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик) (**USSR**) or (СССР), sometimes incorrectly referred to as **Russia**, is a transcontinental country that spans much of Eurasia. It is the largest country by world area, covering over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 square miles) and spanning eleven time zones. It is the most populous country in Europe, and the third-most populous country in the world, with a population of 381 million. A flagship communist state, it is nominally a federal union of nineteen top-level republics. In practice, both its government and its economy are built on a highly centralized model. It is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow. Other major urban areas include Leningrad, Stalingrad, Vladivostok, Tselinograd, Kiev, Odessa, Tashkent, Riga and Minsk.

The Soviet Union traces its origin to the 1917 October Revolution which saw the Bolsheviks, a far left-political party lead by Vladimir Lenin overthrow the Provisional Government and establish the RSFSR, the world's first constitutionally guaranteed socialist state. The October Revolution followed the earlier 1917 February Revolution which saw the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Empire reconstituted into a republican government. Rising tensions across Russia erupted into the Russian Civil War, which pitted the Bolshevik lead RSFSR against their enemies, collectively called the White Army. By 1922, the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious, and created the Soviet Union as a one party state lead by the Bolsheviks which was renamed to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Following Lenin's death and state funeral in 1924, Joseph Stalin assumed leadership over the country. Under his governance, he inaugurated a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization, which led to significant economic growth but also contributed to the Soviet famine of 1930–1933. His rule also saw the expansion of the labour camp system under the Gulag. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin carried out the Great Purge, a campaign of political repression through which he solidified his power by removing his actual and perceived opponents. In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening up the Eastern Front of World War II. The combined Soviet civilian and military casualty figures—estimated to be around 27 million people—accounted for the majority of losses on the side of the Allies. The total defeat of the Axis in 1945 marked a formal cessation of hostilities, and the territories taken by Soviet forces subsequently formed various Soviet satellite states.

By 1947, newfound tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States had escalated into the Cold War. During this period, the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc confronted the American-aligned Western Bloc. The two sides consolidated their opposition to each other through ideology-based military alliances: the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955 to serve Soviet interests; and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which formed earlier in 1949 to serve American interests. During Stalin's final years, in order to make way for his designated successor, Georgy Malenkov, he ordered a purge comprising of high-ranking officials he deemed as "cosmopolitans", which included men like Lazar Kaganovich, Lavrenty Beria and Vyacheslav Molotov. Following Stalin's death and state funeral in 1956, and Malenkov subsequently succeeding him as General Secretary, he introduced a series of reforms towards the Soviet political and financial system with the help of the "Chetverka", of which included Aleksey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev and Viktor Glushkov, most notably OGAS, a project designed to oversee the planning of the Soviet economy in a computerized and modernized fashion. He also funded research institutes that specialized in computer networking like VNIIPAS and eventually established Akademset in 1978, which was the forerunner to the Soviet internet. Malenkov oversaw the Soviet Union's performance during the First Space Race with the first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1), the first man on the moon (Aleksei Leonov), and the first probe to land on another planet (Venera 7). Throughout the 1970s, there was a détente in Soviet Union–United States relations, but bilateral tensions resumed from 1979 onwards due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Towards the end of his term, Malenkov would be tarnished for his handling of the Chernobyl disaster, which would result in calls for reform of the usage of atomic energy in the Soviet Union.

With Malenkov's death in 1988, Grigory Romanov succeeded him. He sought to continue and revitalize the modernization efforts brought before him, expanding Akademset and the creation of foundation for 5 major national networks which would become the backbone of Soviet internet (renamed from Akademset to VNS.) Romanov also would initiate swift reforms towards the USSR's handling of atomic energy, ditching the RBMK reactor in favour of the PWR reactor, as well as contribution towards the IAEA, with the opening of a Laboratory/Research Center in Leningrad. Furthermore, Romanov would also oversee the enlargement of the Soviet space program in time for the Second Space Race, with the VKK Space Orbiter "Buran" program, increased funds towards the exploration of Mars the completion of the Mir space station, as well as increasing Soviet commitment to the International Space Station, scrapping other independent station projects for the meanwhile. During his tenure, Romanov would officially ratify the addition of 4 new republics to the Soviet Union, Tatarstan, Gagauzia, Karakalpakstan and Chechnya,

In 1989, despite protests from both the Supreme Soviet and the general populace, Romanov ordered troop surges in Afghanistan, which would eventually result in a victory against Al-Qaeda, exiling the organization overseas to countries like Iraq. The DRA's victory would continue to sour Soviet Union-United States relations, though never reaching a boiling point. Romanov would also expand the Soviet Union's scope in East Germany, pressuring Egon Krenz to fire Erich Mielke after the Checkpoint Charlie incident in 1989, before eventually declaring a full-scale intervention in 2000, supporting the Spontaneous Revolution and ousting Gregor Gysi, replacing him with Heinz Kessler, resulting in the dissolution of the Socialist Unity Party and the creation of the Party of German Socialism. With Romanov's death in 2008, Boris Gromov would succeed him.

A self-described "Leninist", Gromov has enacted many socially progressive policies on the basis of "regaining our position as a beacon of progress". Despite this, Gromov, as well as the rest of the Soviet government, has been under fire for suspecting to have been responsible for the Assassination Mikhail Gorbachev in 2010, as well as the censoring of information during the height of the ongoing Plumhomme pandemic.

In 2015, the Soviet Union would sign the Interior Planets Treaty in 2015, which would form the basis of commercial space law, being granted complete control over Mars' resources, as well as its moons and any asteroids that may pass by its orbit.

Today, the Soviet Union still produces many significant social and technological achievements and innovations, and is generally regarded to be the leading communist nation. It currently has the world's third-largest economy, and the Soviet Armed Forces comprises the world's largest standing military. An NPT-designated state, it also possesses the world's largest nuclear weapons arsenal. Alongside the United States, China and Japan, the Soviet Union still maintains its status as a superpower since the end of World War II. It exercises global influence through its hegemony in the Eastern Bloc, military and economic strengths, various forms of aid to the Third World, and scientific research.

## Etymology

*See: Official names of the Soviet Union*

The word *soviet* is derived from the Russian word *sovet* (Russian: совет), meaning 'council', 'assembly', 'advice', ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of \**vět-iti* ('to inform'), related to Slavic *věst* ('news'), English *wise*, the root in *ad-vis-or* (which came to English through French), or the Dutch *weten* ('to know'; compare *wetenschap* meaning 'science'). The word *sovietnik* means 'councillor'. Some organizations in Russian history were called *council* (Russian: совет). In the Russian Empire, the State Council which functioned from 1810 to 1917 was referred to as a Council of Ministers.

The Soviets as workers' councils first appeared during the Russian revolution of 1905. Although they were quickly suppressed by the imperial government, the Soviets re-emerged across the country after the February revolution of 1917, and shared power with the Russian Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, used the slogan "all power to the Soviets" to oppose the Provisional Government, and seized power from it with the October coup of 1917. In January 1918, at the third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin proclaimed the formation of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR).

During the Georgian Affair of 1922, Lenin called for the RSFSR and other national Soviet republics to form a greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии, tr. *Soyuz Sovetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii*). Joseph Stalin initially resisted Lenin's proposal but ultimately accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although all the republics began as *socialist soviet* and did not change to the other order until 1936. In addition, in the national languages of several republics, the word *council* or *conciliar* in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian *soviet* and never in others, e.g. Ukrainian SSR.

СССР (in the Latin alphabet: *SSSR*) is the abbreviation of the Russian language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters. The Soviets use this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. After this, the most common Russian initialization is Союз ССР (transliteration: *Soyuz SSR*) which, after compensating for grammatical differences, essentially translates to *Union of SSRs* in English. In addition, the Russian short form name Советский Союз (transliteration: *Sovetskiy Soyuz*, which literally means *Soviet Union*) is also commonly used, but only in its unabbreviated form. Since the start of the Great Patriotic War at the latest, abbreviating the Russian name of the Soviet Union as СС (in the same way as, for example, *United States* is abbreviated into *US*) has been complete taboo, the reason being that СС as a Russian Cyrillic abbreviation is instead associated with the infamous *Schutzstaffel* of Nazi Germany, just as *SS* is in English.

In English language media, the state is referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. In other European languages, the locally translated short forms and abbreviations are usually used such as *Union soviétique* and *URSS* in French, or *Sowjetunion* and *UdSSR* in German. In the English-speaking world, the Soviet Union is also informally called Russia and its citizens Russians, although technically incorrect since Russia is only one of the republics of the USSR. Such misapplications of the linguistic equivalents to the term *Russia* and its derivatives are frequent in other languages as well.

## Geography

The Soviet Union covers an area of over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), and is the world's largest country. It covers a sixth of Earth's land surface, and its size is comparable to the continent of North America. Its western part in Europe accounts for a quarter of the country's area and is the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extends to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia, are much less populous. It spans over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across eleven time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It has five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.

The Soviet Union has the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1+1⁄2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it are a coastline. The country borders Norway, Finland, the Baltic Sea, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. The Bering Strait separates the country from the United States, while the La Pérouse Strait separates it from Japan.

The Soviet Union's highest mountain is Joseph Stalin Peak in Tajik SSR, at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). It also includes most of the world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran), and Lake Baikal in Russian SSR, the world's largest and deepest freshwater lake.

## History

### Revolution and foundation (1917-1922)

Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the 1825 Decembrist revolt. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavourable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but Emperor Nicholas II resisted attempts to move from absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.

A spontaneous popular demonstration in Petrograd on 8 March 1917, demanding peace and bread, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of Nicholas II and the imperial government. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I. At the same time, workers' councils, known in Russian as ‘Soviets’, sprang up across the country, and the most influential of them, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, shared power with the Provisional Government.

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets, adopting the slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” and urging the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On 7 November 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, arresting the Provisional Government leaders and Lenin declared that all power was now transferred to the Soviets. This event would later be officially known in Soviet bibliographies as the "Great October Socialist Revolution". The bloody Red Terror was initiated to shut down all opposition, both perceived and real. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets ended involvement in the war and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

A long and bloody Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds' victory. It included foreign intervention, the execution of the former Emperor and his family, and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million people. In March 1921, during a related war with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia sought to re-conquer all newly independent nations of the former Empire, although their success was limited. Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania all repelled Soviet invasions, while Ukraine, Belarus (as a result of the Polish–Soviet War), Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were occupied by the Red Army.

### Treaty on the Creation of the USSR

On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the first Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations, Mikhail Kalinin, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky and Alexander Chervyakov, on 30 December 1922. The formal proclamation was made from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

An 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 done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931. After the economic policy of ‘War communism’ during the Russian Civil War, as a prelude to fully developing socialism in the country, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s, and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax.

From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The stated purpose was to prevent the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. The debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a ‘troika’ consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR, Lev Kamenev of the Russian SFSR, and Joseph Stalin of the Transcaucasian SFSR.

On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the United Kingdom. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.

According to Archie Brown the constitution was never an accurate guide to political reality in the USSR. For example the fact that the Party played the leading role in making and enforcing policy was not mentioned in it until 1977. The USSR was a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities. However, the term ‘Soviet Russia’ – formally applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republic – was often applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers due to its domination by the Russian SFSR.