Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

### Languages

Russian, Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Tlingit, Yiddish, and many more

### Ethnic Groups

Slavs, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Baltic Peoples, Turkic Peoples, Indigenous Alaskan and Northern Pacific Peoples

## **History**

The Bolshevik Revolution started in with a prison uprising and revolutionary takeover of the Russian Colonial Offices in Sitka, Alaska. The opportunity was seized by revolutionaries who had been able to remain in Moscow. The Romanovs were executed and a provisional government was established.

The Provisional Government was immediately put into a defensive position as imperialist backed Tsarist restoration factions dragged the country into civil war. In Alaska, militias made up of the formerly imprisoned, indigenous Alaskans, peasant settlers, and revolutionaries that had formed to remove the Tsarist colonialists debated returning to Eurasia and remaining in America, declaring independence, and preparing to defend against potential Mexican or Usonian attacks. The decision was ultimately made to send a large fighting force back to Eurasia, and these reinforcements proved integral to the final months of the war. In 1909 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was declared.

### **Inter-War Years**

#### **Lenin in the 1910s**

In 1917 at the Fourth Party Congress (Moscow) instituted a system of rotating cities to host future party congresses. Vladimir Lenin was elected as Secretary. Debates between a growing Left opposition and the Party majority behind Lenin began to be publicly apparent during this congress.

In 1922, due to failing health, Lenin refused re-election at the Seventh Party Congress (Baku). Leon Trotsky, leader of the United Opposition was elected Secretary, inheritors of deep economic problems.

#### **Divided Party**

Over the next few years, the United Opposition proved fragmentary and split along many lines. This disarray was echoed within the Party on a whole, not just the opposition and after Lenin’s death in 1924. The Eight Party Congress, Samarkand, was called during the summer of 1924 and new elections were called. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, was elected Secretary.

#### **Krupskaya's Decade**

Krupskaya's first years as Secretary were not smooth, but by 1927 many of the problems of 1922 had been stabilized. Trotsky had increasingly turned towards ultra-leftism and opportunism, and at the Eleventh Party Congress, New Archangel (the first in America), he and his band of close followers were removed from the Party. Krupskaya was re-elected Secretary. Despite the fact that the economy had somewhat stabilized, ideological factionalism from Democratic Centralists, Bundists, Syndicalists, and more left the Party divided.

#### **Stalin as Secretary**

In 1932 at the Thirteenth Party Congress, Riga, Krupskaya refused re-election and Josef Stalin was elected to General Secretary with by a narrow margin. The Party under Stalin lead an aggressive collectivization and industrialization campaign, attempting to increase production dramatically from the pace under Krupskaya. As the threat of fascism from the west became more evident, military production was made a central function of the economy.

#### **Preparing for War**

The 14th Party Congress, Vilnius 1937, Stalin was appointed Marshall of the Soviet Union, a post which could not be simultaneously held by the Secretary of the CPSU. Stalin accepted and Chairman of the Alaskan Party Pyotr Katanook and veteran of the Alaskan Revolution was elected Secretary.

### **Post-War**

#### **Kollontai**

Wartime emergency powers extended the term of Pyotr Katanook until 1945 when the Second World War had finally ended, and at the first post-war Party Congress, Tbilisi 1945, Alexandra Kollontai was elected Secretary.