Fall of the Soviet Union - Cold War - HISTORY.com Fall of the Soviet Union Fall of the Soviet Union Author Fall of the Soviet Union URL A+E Networks Introduction On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics (Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) met in the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States. Because the three Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) had already declared their independence from the USSR, only one of its 15 republics, Georgia, remained. The once-mighty Soviet Union had fallen, largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR. However, Gorbachev was disappointed in the dissolution of his nation and resigned from his job on December 25.

It was a peaceful end to a long, terrifying and sometimes bloody epoch in world history. Google The Origins and Evolution of the Soviet State The Soviet state was born in 1917. That year, the revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and established a socialist state in the territory that had once belonged to the Russian empire. In 1922, Russia proper joined its far-flung republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first leader of this Soviet state was the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin . Did You Know? In 1988, Time magazine selected Mikhail Gorbachev to be its “Man of the Year” for his work toward ending the Cold War. The next year, it named him its “Man of the Decade.” In 1990, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Soviet Union was supposed to be “a society of true democracy,” but in many ways it was no less repressive than the czarist autocracy that preceded it. It was ruled by a single party–the Communist Party–that demanded the allegiance of every Russian citizen.

After 1924, when the dictator Joseph Stalin came to power, the state exercised totalitarian control over the economy, administering all industrial activity and establishing collective farms. It also controlled every aspect of political and social life. People who argued against Stalin’s policies were arrested and sent to labor camps or executed. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet leaders denounced his brutal policies but maintained the Community Party’s power. They focused in particular on the Cold War with Western powers, engaging in a costly and destructive “arms race” with the United States while exercising military force to suppress anticommunism and extend its hegemony in Eastern Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika In March 1985, a longtime Communist Party politician named Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the USSR He inherited a stagnant economy and a political structure that made reform all but impossible. Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. The first of these was known as glasnost, or political openness. Glasnost eliminated traces of Stalinist repression, like the banning of books and the omnipresent secret police, and gave new freedoms to Soviet citizens.

Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections. The second set of reforms was known as perestroika, or economic restructuring. The best way to revive the Soviet economy, Gorbachev thought, was to loosen the government’s grip on it. He believed that private initiative would lead to innovation, so individuals and cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages and conditions. Gorbachev also encouraged foreign investment in Soviet enterprises. However, these reforms were slow to bear fruit. Perestroika had torpedoed the “command economy” that had kept the Soviet state afloat, but the market economy took time to mature. (In his farewell address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.”) Rationing, shortages and endless queuing for scarce goods seemed to be the only results of Gorbachev’s policies. As a result, people grew more and more frustrated with his government.

The Revolutions of 1989 and the Fall of the Soviet Union Gorbachev believed that a better Soviet economy depended on better relationships with the rest of the world, especially the United States. Even as President Reagan called the USSR the “Evil Empire” and launched a massive military buildup, Gorbachev vowed to bow out of the arms race. He announced that he would withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, where they had been fighting a war since 1979, and he reduced the Soviet military presence in the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. This policy of nonintervention had important consequences for the Soviet Union–but first, it caused the Eastern European alliances to, as Gorbachev put it, “crumble like a dry saltine cracker in just a few months.” The first revolution of 1989 took place in Poland, where the non-Communist trade unionists in the Solidarity movement bargained with the Communist government for freer elections in which they enjoyed great success. This, in turn, sparked peaceful revolutions across Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in November; that same month, the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia overthrew that country’s Communist government.

(In December, however, violence reigned: A firing squad executed Romania’s Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and his wife.) This atmosphere of possibility soon enveloped the Soviet Union itself. Frustration with the bad economy combined with Gorbachev’s hands-off approach to Soviet satellites to inspire a series of independence movements in the republics on the USSR’s fringes. One by one, the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) declared their independence from Moscow. Then, in early December, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine broke away from the USSR and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Weeks later, they were followed by eight of the nine remaining republics. ( Georgia joined two years later.) At last, the mighty Soviet Union had fallen. Tags Cold War Museum Back to the 1990s Fall of the Soviet Union In December of 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.

The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers since the end of World War II. Indeed, the breakup of the Soviet Union transformed the entire world political situation, leading to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe. What led to this monumental historical event? In fact, the answer is a very complex one, and can only be arrived at with an understanding of the peculiar composition and history of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was built on approximately the same territory as the Russian Empire which it succeeded. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the newly-formed government developed a philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to Communism. The state which the Bolsheviks created was intended to overcome national differences, and rather to create one monolithic state based on a centralized economical and political system. This state, which was built on a Communist ideology, was eventually transformed into a totalitarian state, in which the Communist leadership had complete control over the country. However, this project of creating a unified, centralized socialist state proved problematic for several reasons.

First, the Soviets underestimated the degree to which the non-Russian ethnic groups in the country (which comprised more than fifty percent of the total population of the Soviet Union) would resist assimilation into a Russianized State. Second, their economic planning failed to meet the needs of the State, which was caught up in a vicious arms race with the United States. This led to gradual economic decline, eventually necessitating the need for reform. Finally, the ideology of Communism, which the Soviet Government worked to instill in the hearts and minds of its population, never took firm root, and eventually lost whatever influence it had originally carried. By the time of the 1985 rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader, the country was in a situation of severe stagnation, with deep economic and political problems which sorely needed to be addressed and overcome. Recognizing this, Gorbachev introduced a two-tiered policy of reform. On one level, he initiated a policy of glasnost, or freedom of speech. On the other level, he began a program of economic reform known as perestroika, or rebuilding.

What Gorbachev did not realize was that by giving people complete freedom of expression, he was unwittingly unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been pent up for decades, and which proved to be extremely powerful when brought out into the open. Moreover, his policy of economic reform did not have the immediate results he had hoped for and had publicly predicted. The Soviet people consequently used their newly allotted freedom of speech to criticize Gorbachev for his failure to improve the economy. Back to Top The disintegration of the Soviet Union began on the peripheries, in the non-Russian areas. The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded autonomy. This move was later followed by similar moves in Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics. The nationalist movements in the Baltics constituted a strong challenge to Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost. He did not want to crack down too severely on the participants in these movements, yet at the same time, it became increasingly evident that allowing them to run their course would spell disaster for the Soviet Union, which would completely collapse if all of the periphery republics were to demand independence.

After the initiative from Estonia, similar movements sprang up all over the former Soviet Union. In the Transcaucasus region (in the South of the Soviet Union), a movement developed inside the Armenian-populated autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabagh, in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population of this region demanded that they be granted the right to secede and join the Republic of Armenia, with whose population they were ethnically linked. Massive demonstrations were held in Armenia in solidarity with the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabagh. The Gorbachev government refused to allow the population of Nagorno-Karabagh to secede, and the situation developed into a violent territorial dispute, eventually degenerating into an all-out war which continues unabated until the present day. Back to Top Once this “Pandora’s box” had been opened, nationalist movements emerged in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Byelorussia, and the Central Asian republics. The power of the Central Government was considerably weakened by these movements; they could no longer rely on the cooperation of Government figures in the republics. Finally, the situation came to a head in August of 1991.

In a last-ditch effort to save the Soviet Union, which was floundering under the impact of the political movements which had emerged since the implementation of Gorbachev’s glasnost, a group of “hard-line” Communists organized a coup d’etat. They kidnapped Gorbachev, and then, on August 19 of 1991, they announced on state television that Gorbachev was very ill and would no longer be able to govern. The country went into an uproar. Massive protests were staged in Moscow, Leningrad, and many of the other major cities of the Soviet Union. When the coup organizers tried to bring in the military to quell the protestors, the soldiers themselves rebelled, saying that they could not fire on their fellow countrymen. After three days of massive protest, the coup organizers surrendered, realizing that without the cooperation of the military, they did not have the power to overcome the power of the entire population of the country. Back to Top After the failed coup attempt, it was only a few months until the Soviet Union completely collapsed.

Both the government and the people realized that there was no way to turn back the clock; the massive demonstrations of the “August days” had demonstrated that the population would accept nothing less than democracy. Gorbachev conceded power, realizing that he could no longer contain the power of the population. On December 25, 1991, he resigned. By January of 1992, by popular demand, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In its place, a new entity was formed. It was called the “Commonwealth of Independent Republics,” and was composed of most of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. While the member countries had complete political independence, they were linked to other Commonwealth countries by economic, and, in some cases, military ties. Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, has ceased to exist, the fifteen newly formed independent countries which emerged in its aftermath are faced with an overwhelming task. They must develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of wars have developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region is suffering a period of severe economic hardship.

However, despite the many hardships facing the region, bold steps are being taken toward democratization, reorganization, and rebuilding in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union. For additional information click here .

The USSR and the Russian Federation | CK-12 Foundation 5.2 The USSR and the Russian Federation Student Learning Objectives At the end of this section the student will be able to Analyze the effects of physical and human geographic patterns and processes on the past and describe their impact on the present, including significant physical features and environmental conditions that influenced migration patterns and shaped the distribution of culture groups today[WG.1A] Explain how political, economic, social, and environmental push and pull factors and physical geography affect the routes and flows of human migration [WG.7B] Interpret maps to explain the division of land, including man-made and natural borders, into separate political units such as cities, states, or countries [WG.13A] Analyze current events to infer the physical and human processes that lead to the formation of boundaries and other political divisions [WG.14A] Compare how democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, republic, theocracy, and totalitarian systems operate in specific countries [WG.14B] Analyze the human and physical factors that influence the power to control territory and resources, create conflict/war, and impact international political relations of sovereign nations such as China, the United States, Japan, and Russia and organized nation groups such as

 the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) [WG.14C] Identify and give examples of different points of view that influence the development of public policies and decision-making processes on local, state, national, and international levels [WG.15A] As we learned in Section 5.1 "Introducing the Realm", the Russian Empire was built by the czars over the course of a few hundred years.

However, the economic and political systems of the Russian Empire were not sustainable in the modern era. The vast majority of the population were poor, and most were landless peasant farmers—and in a place with short growing seasons, farming was not an easy path to riches. Political decisions were made by a very small elite group. At the dawn of the twentieth century, one hundred years after the Industrial Revolution swept through Great Britain and Western Europe, Russia remained an agricultural country and had not yet begun large-scale industrialization. Outside of the aristocracy, few supported the status quo in Russia, and there was widespread desire for a new political system and government. However, no one could agree on what a new government would look like. In the aftermath of the First World War, a civil war erupted in Russia. During these chaotic times, the last czar, Nicholas II, was forced from office, and he and his family were executed. The most powerful group battling for control of Russia was a Communist group called the Bolsheviks, which literally meant the “larger group.” Other groups, including the “smaller group,” the Mensheviks, lost the civil war.

The Bolshevik leader was Vladimir Lenin, and in 1917 he and his supporters embarked on a quest to turn Russia into a Communist state. The capital city was moved back to Moscow from St. Petersburg, where it had been since the time of Czar Peter the Great in the eighteenth century. St. Petersburg’s name was changed to Petrograd and then Leningrad in honor of Vladimir Lenin, as the atheist Soviets did not want any references to Christian saints. The entire territory of the Russian Empire was turned into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state (see the explanation of Marxism in Section 3.2.1 "Marxist-Leninist Central Planning"). The Soviet Union lasted from 1922 to 1991. Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator who took over after Lenin, was incapacitated in 1922 (and died in 1924). He was a ruthless leader who murdered his way to power and killed or exiled anyone who got in his way.

Stalin is famous for initiating economic plans that helped move Russia from a poor, agrarian state to a large, industrial superpower. He pushed for rapid industrialization, the eradication of family farms in lieu of large communal farms, the end of personal ownership of land or businesses, and the dramatic weakening of organized religion. All these changes came at a great price. During his reign of terror, an estimated thirty million people lost their lives. The forced collectivization of agriculture brought about a devastating famine in 1932–33, in which between six and eight million people starved to death or were killed outright, many of them in Ukraine. Stalin led periodic purges of his perceived political enemies. The largest of these is known as the Great Purge. At that time (1936–38), about one million so-called enemies of the state were executed. More people lost their lives under Stalin than in all the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. The full extent of Stalin’s purges of his people may never be fully known. Stalin’s rule ended in 1953, when he reportedly died of natural causes. However, some historians believe he was poisoned by his close associates.

Table 5.1 Soviet Leaders and Russian Presidents Soviet Union Leaders d = died while in office Marxist-Leninist Central Planning The Soviet Union espoused the philosophies of Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century German theorist. Marx wrote that all political and economic life can be understood as a struggle between the various classes in society. People who adhere to Marx’s philosophy are called Marxists, and the Soviet version of Marxism is called Marxism-Leninism. In Marxist thought, capitalism is an oppressive economic system in which the working class (the proletariat) is oppressed by the bourgeoisie (the wealthy middle class). Marxists believe that the proletariat should revolt, rise up against the bourgeoisie, take the property away from the rich, and give it to the government to control it for the benefit of the common people. Ultimately, a pure Communist system would result, with no social or economic classes, no private property, no rich people, and no poor people. In real life, governments that adopt these ideas practice socialism and are said to be socialist. As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide.

During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption. Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation. Some collective farms were run by the state, while others were run by private cooperatives. During the transition period to collective farming, individual farmers were forced to give up their land, animals, farm equipment, and farm buildings and donate them to the collective farm in their area.

The state also demanded a high percentage of the crops produced. At times, the government collected the entire harvest, not even allowing seed crops to be held for the following season. This brought about widespread famine in 1932–33. Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country’s dissolution in 1991 and even afterward in some areas. The Cold War From the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Union and the United States competed in the global community for the control of labor, resources, and world power. Each side attracted allies, and most countries were on the side of either the United States or the Soviet Union; very few remained neutral. This era, known as the Cold War, did not involve direct military armed conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, but it transformed the world into a political chessboard, with each side wanting to block the other side from gaining ground. Whenever the Soviets would enter into an alliance with a certain country, the United States was right there to try to counter the move. Wars, armed conflicts, sabotage, spying, and covert activities were the methods of the Cold War.

Both sides stockpiled as much deadly weaponry as possible, including nuclear warheads and missiles. They also competed in the race to put people in outer space. The Cold War led to wars fought in Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Afghanistan, Angola, and the Middle East, with the Soviet Union funding one side and the United States supplying the other. Covert wars or guerilla wars with secret agents and political assassinations were fought in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Mozambique, Laos, Cambodia, and a host of other third-world countries. The Cold War divided the world into two main camps, each with a high number of nuclear weapons. Eastern Europe was sectioned off by the Iron Curtain, and the Berlin Wall divided the city of Berlin, Germany. These physical barriers divided the communist countries of Eastern Europe with the capitalist democracies of Western Europe. Germany itself was divided into two separate countries, as explained in Chapter 2 "Europe". Various Soviet dictators came to power and died in office before the end of the Cold War. The last Soviet leader was Mikhail Gorbachev, who assumed power in 1985. The US president at the time was Ronald Reagan.

During the 1980s the United States was outspending the Soviets militarily, and its economy was growing at a much faster rate than that of the USSR. At the same time, the Soviets were engaged in a costly war in Afghanistan, and their economy was faltering and in danger of collapse. Gorbachev realized that reforms had to be implemented to modernize the Soviet system: political life needed to be more open so that people would feel ownership of the country, and the economy needed to be restructured. Gorbachev implemented perestroika(restructuring of the economy with market-like reforms) and glasnost(openness and transparency of all government activities). The restructuring exposed fundamental problems in the economy, and by 1990 the Soviet economy was in worse shape than ever before. The end came in 1991: the Soviet Union collapsed when fourteen of the Soviet republics broke away and declared their independence. At this point, the Soviet state was too weak to prevent it. All the republics, including Russia itself (now called the Russian Federation), became independent countries. The only territories that did not achieve independence were the smaller republics and autonomous regions that existed within the Russian Federation’s boundaries.

The Iron Curtain melted away seemingly overnight, and people were free to travel to and from the former Communist countries. The old Russian flag flew over the Kremlin—the seat of the Russian government—for the first time since Czar Nicholas II had been in power seventy-three years earlier. The Communist era of the Soviet Union and the Cold War were over. Kremlin is a Russian word for a walled city. Inside Moscow’s Kremlin is the famous Red Square. The post-Soviet transition was filled with political, economic, and social turmoil. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian Federation, ushered in a series of economic reforms that privatized state-owned enterprises. Russian leaders tried to reverse socialism rapidly through what they called “shock therapy,” which they knew would be painful but hoped would be brief. These reforms created a new class of capitalist entrepreneurs. Wealth, once controlled by the political elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries. Many ordinary workers faced unemployment for the first time as the new owners of various companies trimmed unnecessary staff.

Private ownership forced housing costs to skyrocket, and while families were generally allowed to keep the homes they already lived in, purchasing houses or condominiums became out of reach for many people. The value of the ruble, Russia’s currency, declined rapidly, and older people watched as their life savings evaporated overnight. Western goods were more easily accessible, and all kinds of consumer products became much more widely available than they were during the Soviet era. Bread lines and empty store shelves became distant memories as the former Communist state shifted over to a type of capitalist democracy. Yeltsin became increasingly less popular as citizens became dissatisfied with corruption and the high social costs of the post-Soviet transition. He resigned in 1999 and was replaced by Vladimir Putin. Outline of Russia’s Historical Geography The Region’s Early Heritage Vikings created fortified trading towns called gorods Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire invaded (1240 CE) Feudal states arose around dominant trading centers Czarist Russia, 1547–1917 Czars unified empire by internal colonialism Forward capital of St.

Petersburg created Pioneers pushed eastward to Siberia and North America Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–22 Czar Nicholas II and his family executed Russian Civil War fought Vladimir Lenin created Communist imperial state Capital moved to Moscow; republics broke away The Soviet Union (USSR), 1922–91 Czarist Empire became the Soviet Union Central planning, collectivization, and the Cold War began Republics kept together by military force External interaction of glasnost initiated (1980s) Economic restructuring and reforms of perestroika introduced (1980s) The Russian Republic, 1991–Present Independent republics lost with internal unrest Economics privatized Central state strengthened (twenty-first century) Behind the Borodinsky Bridge on the right are the government buildings of the Russian Federation. Twenty-First-Century Russia A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia’s vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s.

Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues. However, Russia still needs to modernize its dilapidated manufacturing base if it is to economically compete against the European Union, North America, or eastern Asia. During Vladimir Putin’s presidency (2000–2008), Russia witnessed substantial economic growth that inspired foreign investors to pump money into the Russian economy and catapulted Moscow into an investment haven and one of the richest cities in the world. In 2008, Moscow claimed to have more billionaires than any other city in the world. Russia has reestablished itself as a major player in the global economy, although much of its population still suffers from poverty and social problems. Russia’s population grew steadily during the Soviet era, except during periods of famine or warfare, and the country underwent a rural-to-urban shift as farm workers moved to cities to labor in factories. However, when the USSR collapsed, Russia’s population began a steep decline, falling from a peak of 149 million in 1991 to about 143 million in 2005.

The trend of low birth rates actually began during the Soviet period. The population decline occurred because birth rates always decline during periods of economic and social crisis as people delay or decide against having children, and the country experienced particularly high death rates because of alcoholism, heart disease, and the collapse of the social safety net. Any time death rates surpass birth rates, a country’s population will decline unless the difference is offset by immigration. Russia’s birth rate was also impacted by very high rates of abortion: in 1992, for example, there were 221 abortions in Russia for every 100 live births. [1]Although Russia’s population has seemingly bottomed out, the only reason it is not continuing to decline is immigration from the former Soviet republics. Russia still has a negative rate of natural increase. To put Russia’s demographic profile in context, its fertility rate was only about 1.5 in 2010, meaning that the average woman would have 1.5 children in her lifetime. This is below the 2.1 children each woman would need to have for the population to remain stable.

The fertility rate in Russia is similar to that of countries in Europe (1.5) but lower than that of the United States (2.1). [2] Life expectancy for Russian men is variously reported as sixty years up to sixty-three years, while women can expect to live seventy-three to seventy-five years. In Western Europe, life expectancies are about eighty years. About 80 percent of Russia’s population is ethnically Russian. The next largest group is Tatar (3.8 percent), a group that traditionally has spoken the Tatar language and practiced Islam. More than 150 ethnic groups are represented in Russia, including indigenous people of the Arctic who herd reindeer for a living. Each of the nationalities of the former Soviet republics has a presence in Russia, and because of its relatively strong economy, Russia (especially Moscow) is an immigration magnet for residents of those countries. Most of these groups have their own language and cultural traditions. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia. For generations, it was the country’s official religion, and Russian people were automatically considered to be Orthodox, no matter what their personal beliefs.

During the Soviet era, the government did much to weaken the church, including killing tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns and closing most churches. The much smaller church that survived was largely controlled by the state. Because of state-sanctioned atheism during the Soviet era, only 15 to 20 percent of Russia’s population today actively practices Orthodoxy, although a much greater number claim to be Russian Orthodox Christians. Another 15 percent of the country’s population practices Islam, especially in places such as the Caucasus region and the southern Ural Mountains, and about 2 percent practice other forms of Christianity, such as Catholicism and Protestantism. [3] Even though Orthodoxy is practiced by a minority of Russia’s population, the church has increased its influence since 1991 and often acts as an official church. A small percentage of the population are Buddhists, and various ethnic groups in Siberia and the Far East practice tribal religions and pagan rites. The Russian Language Like English, Russian is an Indo-European language. Russian is on the Slavic branch of the language tree, along with languages such as Polish, Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian.

A relatively new language, it developed from a language called Old East Slavic that was spoken around 1100 CE. Medieval Russian developed in the thirteenth century, and modern literary Russian is usually traced back to the early nineteenth century. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed from Greek. The Russian language is the official language of the Russian republic. With over one hundred languages used in the country, twenty-seven of them are officially recognized in various regions within the republic. [1] “Historical Abortion Statistics, Russia,” Johnston`s Archive, . [2] “The World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency, . [3] “The World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency, . Key Takeaways The Communist state was created in 1917 as the result of a civil war, which evolved into the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. During this era, the Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state. One of the primary goals of the new USSR was rapid industrialization, and this goal was achieved through central planning and the collectivization of agriculture. Inefficiencies in the system persisted throughout the Soviet era.

The Soviet Union’s Communist system was maintained at great cost: millions were killed by purges and in government-produced famines. A weakened USSR tried to reform in the 1980s through Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost but instead collapsed in 1991. Early post-Soviet years were ones of democratization, rapid privatization, and the unraveling of the social safety net. The shift to capitalism restructured the Russian economy. The Russian economy strengthened after 2000, and Russian president Vladimir Putin strengthened the power of the central state. Russia has a low fertility rate and a negative rate of natural increase. High rates of abortions and alcoholism have been contributing factors. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia. (ISN) Discussion and Study Questions By what process did the Russian Empire become the Soviet Union? Who were the first two leaders of the USSR, what were some of their accomplishments, and what were some of the human costs? What were some of the main features of Karl Marx’s philosophy? What were two main economic policies of the Soviet Union? Who was fighting the Cold War? Where were major conflicts fought during this war? How did the Cold War end?

What leaders were in power in the United States and the Soviet Union when it ended? What two policies did the last Soviet leader implement to assist in reforming the USSR? What happened to the many external republics after 1991? How did the economic system change for Russia after 1991? What are some reasons for Russia’s population decline? (ISN) Geography Exercise Identify the following key places on a map: Moscow Newspaper in Russia. Additional Internet Resources Nationalatlas.gov contains a remarkable range of products and services to meet the diverse needs of people who are looking for maps and geographic information about America. Dynamic maps are innovative illustrations of geographic phenomena. We combine the science of mapping with today's multimedia to offer maps that are useful, understandable, and that stimulate interactivity. NationMaster is a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. StateMaster is a unique statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data on US states. It is information compiled from various primary sources such as the US Census Bureau, the FBI, and the National Center for Educational Statistics.

More than just a mere collection of various data, StateMaster goes beyond the numbers to provide you with visualization technology like pie charts, maps, graphs and scatterplots. They also have thousands of map and flag images, state profiles, and correlations. Teaching And Learning World Geography (TALWG) is a cooperative effort of the Texas Alliance for Geographic Education DLESE is the Digital Library for Earth System Education, a free resource that supports teaching and learning about the Earth system. DLESE's development was funded by the National Science Foundation and continues to be built by a distributed community of educators, students, and scientists to support Earth system education at all levels. Gapminder provides visually stunning reminders of the gap - the unequal distribution of wealth and resources on our planet - using intriguing graphics and video clips. Houghton-Mifflin's Education Place provides a good selection of outline maps as does the Enchanted Learning site. CountryReports.org provides over 27,000 pages of cultural, historical, and statistical information. USSR: Overview of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics By Matt Rosenberg Updated August 17, 2016.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (also known as the USSR or the Soviet Union) consisted of Russia and 14 surrounding countries. The USSR's territory stretched from the Baltic states in Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean, including the majority of northern and portions of central Asia. The Story of the USSR in Brief The USSR was founded in 1922, five years after the Russian Revolution overthrew the monarchy of the czar. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was one of the leaders of the revolution and was the first leader of the USSR until his death in 1924. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. During its existence, the USSR was the largest country by area in the world. It included more than 8.6 million square miles (22.4 million square kilometers) and stretched 6,800 miles (10,900 kilometers) from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. The capital of the USSR was Moscow (also modern Russia's capital city). continue reading below our video 10 Best Universities in the United States The USSR was also the largest communist country.

Its Cold War with the United States (1947-1991) filled most of the 20th century with tension that extended throughout the world. During much of this time (1927-1953), Joseph Stalin was the totalitarian leader and his regime is known as one of the most brutal in world history. Tens of millions of people lost their lives while Stalin held power. The USSR was dissolved in late 1991 during the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev. What is the CIS? The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was a somewhat unsuccessful effort by Russia to keep the USSR together in an economic alliance. It was formed in 1991 and included many of the independent republics that made up the USSR. In the years since its formation, the CIS has lost a few members and other countries have simply never joined. By most accounts, analysts think of the CIS as little more than a political organization in which its members exchange ideas. Very few of the agreements that the CIS has adopted have, in reality, been implemented.

Countries That Made Up the Former USSR Of the fifteen constituent republics of the USSR, three of these countries declared and were granted independence a few months preceding the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The remaining twelve did not become independent until the USSR fell completely on December 26, 1991. Armenia Estonia - Granted independence in September 1991 and is not a member of the CIS. Georgia - Withdrew of the CIS in May 2005. Kazakhstan Latvia - Granted independence in September 1991 and is not a member of the CIS. Lithuania - Granted independence in September 1991 and is not a member of the CIS. Moldova - Formerly known as Moldavia. Russia Turkmenistan - Associate member of the CIS. Ukraine Participating member of the CIS. Uzbekistan Why did the soviet union split into so many different countries? Why did the soviet union split into so many different countries? Answers: Essentially the Soviet Union split into either former countries, that prior to the USSR had been sovereign nations that joined or were conquered.

There were a few of the countries that were created out of an area that were multiple ethnicities which split into individual countries after the break up of the USSR. The nations were free countries BEFORE the Soviets conquered them ~~~ when the USSR broke up the countries returned to who they were. thats why they called it a union because it was a union of many different countries: unionised by force from the Russians: the other countries (such as latvia, lithuania, ukraine, romania, hungary, etc) were invaded and forced to join. they have differnet languages and culture from the russains. so as soon as they had a chance they split away. The Soviet Union was basically Stalin's action of pushing a bunch of separate countries together and using military force to maintain the combination. This worked as long as they could squeeze resources to maintain an army. Once the soviet union became incapable of using force to maintain a fiction the union broke more-or-less into what would have been the composite pieces. This is why Vietnam merged once the U.S. was no longer around to prevent the Chinese from merging it. Had the Chinese not had the resources to support North Vietnam, they could never have taken over the south.

Of course, it could be argued that the country wouldn't have broken apart if it hadn't been partitioned in the first place back in the 1940s. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact the neighboring countries (such asTurkey) don't want it and are willing to use force to stop it,. the northern part of Iraq would have become Kurdistan by now. During the 19th century, more territorial acquisitions were made in Europe and Asia. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the imperial household. The Communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed the USSR. The brutal rule of Josef STALIN (1928-53) strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives.

The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness)* and perestroika (restructuring)** in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into 15 independent republics. Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period. While some progress has been made on the economic front, recent years have seen a recentralization of power under Vladimir PUTIN and an erosion in nascent democratic institutions. A determined guerrilla conflict still plagues Russia in Chechnya. * Glasnost, meaning "openness", was one of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies introduced to the Soviet Union in 1985. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking glasnost was in part to pressure conservatives within the party who opposed his policies of economic restructuring or perestroika.

While in the West the notion of "glasnost" is associated with the freedom of speech, main goal of this policy was to make the management transparent and discutable, to oppose the former situation when major political and management decisions were made by a narrow circle of apparatchiks or within Politburo, and were beyond criticism. Glasnost gave new freedom to the people, such as freedom of speech, which was a radical change because control of ideas had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. Therefore glasnost is considered an important step towards real democracy in Russia. Under glasnost the people could learn significantly more about the horrors committed by the government when Stalin was in power. (Although Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personality cult, information about the true proportions of his atrocities was still suppressed.) Thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released in the spirit of Glasnost. However, Gorbachev's original goal of using glasnost and perestroika to reform the Soviet Union proved futile and the government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

** Perestroika, meaning "economic restructuring", was one of the policies introduced to the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. Gorbachev realised the Soviet Union economy was failing and felt the communist system did not need to be replaced, but certainly needed to be reformed, and this would be done by the process of perestroika. A key part of perestroika was to reduce the amount of money being spent on defense, and to do this Gorbachev felt the Soviet Union should: Pull out of Afghanistan. Negotiate with the United States about arms reductions. Cease interfering in other communist countries (The Sinatra Doctrine). In contrast to economic reforms in China, perestroika is widely regarded to have failed in its original goal of restructuring the Soviet economy. The reasons for its failure have been examined by many economists and historians, including Merle Goldberg. Among the reasons cited for perestroika's failure was the inability to promote new private or semi-private economic entities and the unwillingness of Gorbachev to reform Soviet agriculture.

Unlike the Deng Xiaoping reforms in China, perestroika not only failed to bring immediate economic benefits to most people, but the dismantling of the planned economy created economic chaos which was a large factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. ------------------------------... The collapse of the Soviet Union was finalized on December 26, 1991 when the Supreme Soviet officially dissolved the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev instituted a number of political reforms under the name of Glasnost, these included relaxing censorship and political repression, reducing the powers of the KGB and democratisation. The reforms were intended to break down resistance against Gorbachev's economic reforms, by conservative elements within the Communist Party. Under these reforms, much to the alarm of party conservatives, competitive elections were introduced for the posts of officials. Gorbachev's relaxation of censorship and attempts create more political openness. However they also had the unintended effect of re-awakening long surpressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet Union's constituent republics.

During the 1980s calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, this was especially marked in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in other Soviet republics such as the Ukraine and Azerbaijan. These nationalist movements were strengthened greatly by the declining Soviet economy, whereby Moscow's rule became a convenient scapegoat for economic troubles. Gorbachev had accidently unleashed a force that would ultimately destroy the Soviet Union. On February 15, 1989, Soviet forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Soviet Union continued to support the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan with substantial aid until the end of 1991. In 1989 the communist governments of the Soviet Union's satellite states were overthrown one by one with feeble resistance from Moscow. By the late 1980s the process of openness and democratisation began to run out of control, and went far beyond what Gorbachev had intended. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Union's constituent republics, nationalists swept the board.

As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSR's central Moscow government to impose its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined. On February 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly of power. The USSR's constituent republics began to assert their national sovereignty over Moscow, and started a "war of laws" with the central Moscow government, this involved the governments of the constituent republics repudiating all-union legislation where it conflicted with local laws, asserting control over their local economies and refusing to pay tax revenue to the central Moscow government. This strife caused economic dislocation, as supply lines in the economy were broken, and caused the Soviet economy to decline further. Gorbachev made desparate and ill-fated attempts to assert control, notably in the Baltic states, but the power and authority of the central government had been dramatically and irreversably undermined. On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared independence and pulled out of the union. However, a large part of the population of the Lithuanian SSR comprised ethnic Russians, and the Red Army had a strong presence there.

The Soviet Union initiated an economic blockade of Lithuania and kept troops there "to secure the rights of ethnic Russians." In January 1991, clashes between Soviet troops and Lithuanian civilians occurred, leaving 20 dead. This further weakened the Soviet Union's legitimacy, internationally and domestically. On March 30, 1990, the Estonian supreme council declared Soviet power in Estonia since 1940 to have been illegal, and started a process to re-establish Estonia as an independent state. Also amongst Gorbachev's reforms, was the introduction of a directly elected president of the RSFR (Russia). The election for this post was held in June 1991. The populist candidate Boris Yeltsin, who was an outspoken critic of Mikhail Gorbachev, won 57% percent of the vote, and humiliated Gorbachev's prefered candidate, Former Prime Minister Ryzhkov, who won just 16% of the vote. On August 20, 1991, the republics were to sign a new union treaty, making them independent republics in a federation with a common president, foreign policy and military.

However, on August 18, a group of Gorbachev's ministers led by Gennadi Yaneyev, backed by the KGB and military, staged a coup d'�tat. Gorbachev was held prisoner in his summer residence on the Crimean peninsula (Ukraine), and martial law was declared in Russia on August 19. Large groups of soldiers controlled Moscow, but no politicians were arrested. During this time, Estonia declared its independence on August 20. Boris Yeltsin and the semi-democratically elected Russian parliament opposed the coup, and the coup makers gave up on August 21, the same day that the third Baltic republic, Latvia, declared its independence. Immediately after the coup failed, and before Mikhail Gorbachev returned to Moscow, the power vacuum was filled by Boris Yeltsin; he immediately signed a decree banning the Communist party throughout Russia, and the ban was soon extended throughout the Soviet Union. Thus 70 years of Communist rule effectively came to an end. On December 21, 11 of the 12 remaining republics (all except Georgia) founded the Commonwealth of Independent States, effectively ending the USSR.

On December 25, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president, and on December 26 the Supreme Soviet officially dissolved the USSR. More Related Questions & Answers... The Collapse of the Soviet Union - End of Cold War End of Cold War The Collapse of the Soviet Union The Iron Curtain Falls. What Happened? The Soviet Union, otherwise known as the USSR is a former country in Eastern Europe, which included several republics. The USSR was founded in 1917 and collapsed in 1991 after their citizens decided that they preferred capitalism. It was a main world power, but slowly collapsed due to poor economy, leadership, and several other aspects which caused this "once a world power," to disintegrate. Why? Throughout the1970’s,Western economies progressed with new technologies. But the Soviet Union focused on heavy industries such as coal, iron, and steel production. Consumer goods were poorly made, scarce, and very expensive. Their economy was slowly disintegrating and socialism failed. They wanted equality with America but had no money. Along with the Soviet Union's poor economy, they faced social problems. Two of the major problems arose i the 1970’s and 1980’s.

As many writers and authors became more popular, one particular man named Samizdat arose in dissident activity such as self-publishing. These types of rebellions gave people the idea that there were alternatives to the ways of the Soviets. Also, as Jews were given the right to move to Israel, many pleased to leave. But, the USSR refused. This made other citizens wonder why anyone would want to leave the “worker’s paradise.” This started the questionings of many workers and led to a rise in nationalist attitudes. People also grew very cynical of the propaganda of the government- controlled media. Lastly, the leaders of the USSR, Brezhnev and his right-hand man Kosygin, found the need to stabilize what they believed Krushchev had made into chaos. They wanted to change Krushcev’s reforms. This created more chaos and by the late 1970’s the country was a gerontocracy. Behind the scenes, there was much conspiracy and deceit. Once the power of the government was coming to an end, the people tore down the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was a barrier between West Germany and East Germany. This was symbolic to the end of communism in the Soviet Union. After?

The collapse of the Soviet Union changed the rest of the world's economy and political environment. After this collapse, there were no conflicts of interests after World War Two such as the cold war. Fifteen republics emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union such as: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the three Baltic Republics (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), the three Caucasian Republics (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and the Central Asia Republics. Then, in 1991, the Democratic Party's leader, Boris Yeltsin, was put in command of Russia. He had no specific plan. He understood that capitalization and westernization were the only forms of government that could maintain a steady government. But the process would be very difficult. Slowly, Russia came to a recovery.

Question: How many new states were created when the USSR collapsed in 1991?
Answer: Fifteen