Soviet Union

The official state flag of the Soviet Union used since 1922, and the official flag used throughout World War II

## Geographic Information

### Climate

A temperate to the continental Arctic climate

### Terrain

Ranges from steppes with low hills located west of the Ural Mountains, extensive forests and tundra in the Siberia region, along with deserts in Central Asia and mountains along it's southern borders

## Political Information

### Notable Cities

Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR) and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR)

### Government

Federal, Marxist-Leninist, one-party, socialist republic under a Stalinist, totalitarian dictatorship (1927-1953)

### Affiliation

Independent: 1939-1941Allies: 1941-1945

The Soviet Union, officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was one of the "Big Three" nations, that fought mainly against Nazi Germany and the Axis during the later phases of World War II

Notable engagements that the Soviet Union was involved in, included the Eastern Front of World War II, which later became known as the "Great Patriotic War" in the Soviet Union, during which, Nazi Germany had managed to push into the Soviet Union throughout a 2,900-kilometer or 1,800 mi frontline, with about 3 million men and 600,000 motor vehicles, all the way to the outskirts of the capital, Moscow. The Soviet Union was also involved in some fighting against the Japanese during the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria in 1945, during which, the Soviet Union helped the United States with its invasion of Japan by invading the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, during which, the Soviet Union had crossed an unprecedented amount of land in an almost un-human time frame, while stretching out their supply lines up to a point that has **never** been seen before in any other war or conflict

## **The Soviet Union Before the War**

Before the official start of the war, the Soviet Union had experienced a plethora of political changes and major events that would lead up to the events that occurred in World War II. After Lenin's death in 1924, the man that would lead the Soviet Union throughout the whole of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had come to power after a harsh power struggle. Due to the competitive nature of all the high-ranking individuals that could potentially become a successor to Lenin, Stalin had begun a campaign of political purges to solidify his position as the new leader of the Soviet Union. He had also implemented a new command economy into the Soviet Union, which would help contribute to the mass industrialization of the Soviet Union later on but would also help contribute to the mass Soviet famine from 1930 until 1933, due to the forced collectivization that was also enforced under Stalin's rule

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## **The Great Purge**

Due to many people speaking out against Stalin's rule, most notably Leon Trotsky, a well-known Bolshevik revolutionary who believed in spreading the communist revolution towards other states via the concepts of "World revolution" and "Permanent revolution", unlike Stalin, who believed in securing the revolution in Russia and the other countries of the Soviet Union via the "Socialism in one country" policy, Stalin had begun a campaign to purge any and all opposition towards him in the Soviet Union. This would come to be known as the "Great Purge" or the "Great Terror", during which, many political rivals of Stalin, experienced military leaders who had secret sympathies for other non-Stalin approved ideologies and normal citizens alike, were investigated, arrested, trialed and either sentenced to the Soviet forced-labor camps, called "Gulags" or in most cases, executed on counts of treason. Over 700,000 to 1.2 million people have been estimated to have been killed during the Great Purge, 116,000 of which, were estimated to have died while being subjugated to the Gulag system. The Great Purge lasted from 1936 until 1938, which had later contributed to the poor performance of the Soviet Union in the beginning stages of Operation Barbarossa, due to many experienced military leaders being ousted from any viable leadership positions

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## **The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Partitioning of Poland**

The Soviet Union first initially adopted a policy of hostility towards Nazi Germany, due to the radically different ideologies of the 2 states, with one being a federal, Marxist–Leninist, one-party, socialist republic and the other one being a unitary, Nazi, one-party, fascist state. As time passed however, Nazi Germany had approached the Soviet Union, seeking closer relations with them, they had offered the Soviet Union to partition Poland between each other, with Nazi Germany taking the western half of Poland and the Soviet Union occupying the eastern half of Poland, which included some core areas of certain Soviet republics, such as the Byelorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR and therefore, the Soviets knew that they couldn't refuse this offer. So once the pact was signed on the 23rd of August 1939, the Soviets had ordered an invasion of Poland almost immediately after the German invasion began and because of this, Poland fell quickly to the 2 giants crushing in on them. Once Poland was secured, the 2 great powers divided the occupied lands among themselves. Little did the Soviets know, that they had just fallen into an elaborate trap that was set up by the Germans from the very beginning...

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## **The Winter War**

Ever since the Soviets had won the Russian Civil War in 1923, relationships between themselves and the country of Finland had been bitter to say the least, due to the fact that the Finnish took advantage of the civil war to form their own independent country, free of any Russian influence. Yet in 1939, Stalin was getting tired of the Finnish exercising their independence near his country, so he had sent them an offer for the Finnish to secede some land from Karelia to the Soviets, in exchange for the Fins getting some land up north, which in total, was an area that was twice the size that was demanded from Finland. Surprisingly, the Finnish had rejected the offer in the end. Due to the offer being rejected by the Finnish government, Stalin was enraged, and ordered an immediate invasion of Finland. This came to be known as the Winter War, which lasted from November 30th, 1939, until March 13th, 1940. During this time, Soviet forces had managed to make a significant advancement into Finnish territory but were then halted in a grueling stalemate, which lasted throughout most of the war. This was a very embarrassing ordeal for the Soviet Union, as it had managed to be halted by a tiny nation that was about 51 times smaller than the Soviet Union itself and that had a military that was about 67 **million** times smaller than that of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Soviet reinforcements eventually arrived in the later stages of the war, beating back the Finns and forcing them to negotiate peace. In the drawn-up peace treaty, which was named the Moscow Peace Treaty, Finland had to secede some of its land, including Viipuri, which was considered as the second largest city of Finland at the time, according to the population registration. In addition, the Finnish had to pay war reparations to the Soviets and later on, take some of the responsibility for causing the Continuation War, a part of the later on Eastern Front of World War II (the Great Patriotic War). Overall, the results caused the national pride of Finland to be damaged quite significantly, while still managing to retain their independence from the Soviets

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## **Eastern Front of World War II (the Great Patriotic War)**

With Hitler's focus on the war shifting more towards the eastern side of Europe, Nazi Germany prepared its troops on the Soviet border as it prepares to initiate Operation Barbarossa, the largest known military operation ever to take place in the whole history of warfare. Germany was very comfortable with their current situation in western Europe, as they had managed to defeat the French and secure western Europe for themselves. Now, they needed more "Lebensraum" (living space in German), to be able to build a new "Aryan", "Thousand Year Reich" and they knew just were to get that land. On the 22nd of June 1941, Operation Barbarossa was launched, which had caught the Soviet high command and Stalin, completely off guard. During the initial stages of the German offensive, Germany had blitzed across most of European Russia, taking major slabs of Soviet land with ease, such as the Baltic states, Moldova and most of Ukraine and most of Belorussia. The Germans then proceeded to advance to Leningrad and had cut it off from the Soviet mainland, causing it to be besieged for over 2 **years**, 4 months, 2 weeks and 5 days, one of the longest recorded and most destructive sieges in all of human history. The Germans also managed to take Kiev and Azov with ease. The Germans were nearing the capital of the Soviet Union, the Battle of Moscow was about to commence. The initial German offensive started off well enough but soon turned bad, when they began to be halted by the staunch Soviet defenders and a Soviet counter offensive from the city itself drove the Germans back out of Moscow and into the surrounding cities of Oryol, Vyazma and Vitebsk. The tables had now turned in the favor of the Soviets

With this surprising defeat at the hands of the desperate Soviet defenders, Germany had to rethink its strategical offensive all over again. This gave opportune time for the Soviets to plan a well-planned counterattack, which eventually eliminated the threat of the possible capturing of Moscow, but the Soviets didn't stop there. The counterattack carried on, until eventually, the Soviets retook all former Soviet territory that they had lost during operation Barbarossa, **but** they still didn't stop there. The Soviets used the momentum that they gained from taking back all their old lands, to push into Axis occupied territory and other smaller Axis aligned countries, such as Western Poland, Romania, Hungary and Finland. The push was very successful and by 1944, the Soviets had taken almost all the areas that the Germans had previously occupied in eastern Europe. Eventually, the Soviets had entered Berlin on the 16th of April, which commenced in the Battle of Berlin, which lasted until May 2nd, in which the Soviets gained complete control of the capital city of Nazi Germany, which had now essentially crippled the German Reich, with the suicide of Hitler on April 30th and the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8th shortly afterwards

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## **Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (Soviet Invasion of Manchuria)**

After the eventual surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8th, 1945, the Soviets were finally finished fighting the brutal battle in Europe, but they were not completely done just yet. The Pacific War between Japan and the United States was still going on and the Japanese Empire was on the brink of collapse, so the Soviets decided to take advantage of this opportunity. On the 9th of August 1945, the Soviets began a massive invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, which was located in the Chinese region of Manchuria. The ensuing conflict escalated into the Soviet-Japanese war, of which, this was the largest and bloodiest campaign of the whole war between the Soviet Union and Japan. During this campaign, the Soviets used nearly more than 1 million troops and 5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns to take over all of Manchuria and they managed to do so successfully through over a thousand pincer movements that were strategically staged throughout all of Manchukuo. The offensive only took about 11 days to complete, as the Soviets were moving at a super-fast pace to conquer all of the Manchurian region, this would eventually become the record for the most quickly known executed military operation that was ever recorded in the history of warfare. In the aftermath of the campaign, the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo, Mengjiang and Japanese Korea had all collapsed in the process, with the division of Korea taking place shortly after the campaign finished and most of the former lands of Manchukuo and Mengjiang being returned to both the Nationalist Government of China and the Communist Party of China

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## **The Soviet Union After the War**

After the initial ending stages of World War II in 1945, the "Big Three", A.K.A. Churchill of Great Britain, Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and Harry S. Truman of the United States, all came together for a series of meetings to decide the future of the European continent. It was eventually decided that Germany would be equally divided by the Allies, with Great Britain occupying most of the north-western half of Germany, France occupying a small portion of the south-western half of Germany (though they were not initially included in the partition of Germany), America occupying the south-eastern half of Germany, alongside some small enclaves in the north-western half of Germany, which were the naval ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven and the Soviet Union occupying the whole eastern half of Germany. Berlin was split accordingly as well, with Great Britian occupying the center-west part of Berlin, France occupying the north-western part of Berlin, America occupying the south-western part of Berlin and the Soviet Union occupying all of eastern Berlin. All of the former eastern European countries that were aligned with the Axis, such as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, were all given to the Soviet Union to decide the future of. The United States and Great Britain were insistent on giving those countries democratic systems of government with "free and fair" elections, which Stalin had promised as well but that was not the real case. Instead, Stalin had implemented communist, totalitarian puppet governments in each of those countries, which angered the Allies, so they decided to merge all of their occupied zones of Germany into one, to prevent possible Soviet takeover of all of Germany. This unified state would eventually become known as West Germany, which in turn off its creation, angered the Soviet Union. Relations between the former allies only continued to deteriorate from here on out, as the Iron Curtain had slowly started to descend across Europe and the Cold War was about to begin...

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