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UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

Introduction

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was a flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Russian SFSR, the world's first constitutionally socialist state. The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic, resulting in the Russian Civil War. The Russian SFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth but contributed to a famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system of the Gulag was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact, but in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II. The Soviets played a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers, suffering an estimated 27 million casualties, which accounted for most Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army, forming satellite states, and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower.

Geopolitical tensions with the United States led to the Cold War. The American-led Western Bloc coalesced into NATO in 1949, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. Neither side engaged in direct military confrontation, and instead fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. In 1953, following Stalin's death, the Soviet Union undertook a campaign of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev, which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China. During the 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded its efforts in space exploration and took a lead in the Space Race with the first artificial satellite, the first human spaceflight, the first space station, and the first probe to land on another planet. In 1985, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. In 1989, various countries of the Warsaw Pact overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes, and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to preserve the country as a renewed federation, an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the largest republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede. On 26 December, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Russian SFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation, which became the Soviet Union's successor state; all other republics emerged as fully independent post-Soviet states.

During its existence, the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations. It had the world's second-largest economy and largest standing military. An NPT-designated state, it wielded the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations as well as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Before its dissolution, the Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomatic and ideological influence (particularly in the Global South), military and economic strengths, and scientific accomplishments. (Full article...)

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Adults sitting at computers — Computer class at Chkalovski Village School No. 2 in 1985–1986

The history of computing in the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, when the country began to develop its Small Electronic Calculating Machine (MESM) at the Kiev Institute of Electrotechnology in Feofaniya. Initial ideological opposition to cybernetics in the Soviet Union was overcome by a Khrushchev era policy that encouraged computer production.

By the early 1970s, the uncoordinated work of competing government ministries had left the Soviet computer industry in disarray. Due to lack of common standards for peripherals and lack of digital storage capacity the Soviet Union's technology significantly lagged behind the West's semiconductor industry. The Soviet government decided to abandon development of original computer designs and encouraged cloning of existing Western systems (e.g. the 1801 CPU series was scrapped in favor of the PDP-11 ISA by the early 1980s). (Full article...)

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Credit: ITAR-TASS

Originally a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin became Mikhail Gorbachev's political enemy, and later, the first President of the Russian Federation.

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... that Joseph Stalin deported the Balkar people from the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on suspicions that they collaborated with Nazi Germany?

... that because Leonid Brezhnev had more than 200 decorations, it was decided to break the Soviet custom of featuring only one decoration on cushions during his funeral?

... that the massacre in Vinnytsia by the Soviet secret police NKVD in the purges of 1937-1938 was investigated in 1943 during the German invasion of Ukraine and used in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union?

... that the Poltava Bandurist Capella, directed by Hnat Khotkevych, was the first Soviet ensemble to be invited to tour North America?

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“

I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.

”

— Dmitri Shostakovich, talking about life living in the USSR

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Soviet Union

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Lenin in 1920

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who was the founder and first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.

Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's execution in 1887. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government, and devoted the following years to a law degree before relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a leading Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years, after which he moved to Western Europe and became a key figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In the party's 1903 schism, he led his Bolshevik faction against the Mensheviks. Lenin briefly returned to Russia during the failed Revolution of 1905, and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution, which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the collapse of capitalism and the rise of socialism. After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II and established a Provisional Government, Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the regime. (Full article...)

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Nikita Khrushchev Lavrentiy Beria George Koval El Lissitzky Dmitri Shostakovich Alexei Kosygin Mikhail Suslov Alexander Alekhine Pavel Bure Gennady Yanayev Andrei Kirilenko (politician) Lev Chernyi Eduard Streltsov Vyacheslav Molotov Valentin Pavlov Samantha Smith Ivan Bagramyan Guy Burgess Sergo Ordzhonikidze

General images

The following are images from various Soviet Union-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold (from Russian Revolution)
Image 2Murder of the Romanov family, Le Petit Journal (from Russian Revolution)
Image 3Soviet painting Vladimir Lenin, by Isaac Brodsky (from Russian Revolution)
Image 4Russian Civil War in the European part of Russia (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 5Nikolai Podgorny visiting Tampere, Finland on 16 October 1969 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 6Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 7Provisional Government's volunteer soldiers secure Petrograd's Palace Square with the Austin Armoured Car, summer 1917. (from Russian Revolution)
Image 8"Pogrom in the Winter Palace" by Ivan Vladimirov (from October Revolution)
Image 9Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 10On 21 December 1991, the leaders of 11 former Soviet republics, including Russia and Ukraine, agreed to the Alma-Ata Protocols, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 11The elections to the Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won 24% of the vote. (from October Revolution)
Image 12Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with US President Ronald Reagan (left), 1985 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 13American, British, and Japanese Troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support to the White Army. (from Russian Revolution)
Image 14The Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million people.
(from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 15Cruiser Aurora (from October Revolution)
Image 16European theatre of the Russian Civil War in 1918 (from October Revolution)
Image 17The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich. (from October Revolution)
Image 18The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917 (from October Revolution)
Image 19Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria with Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, on his lap. As head of the NKVD, Beria was responsible for many political repressions in the Soviet Union. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 20The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev and Lashevich. (from Russian Revolution)
Image 21Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917 (from October Revolution)
Image 22Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev and US President Jimmy Carter sign the SALT II arms limitation treaty in Vienna on 18 June 1979. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 23Russian troops in trenches awaiting a German attack (from Russian Revolution)
Image 24Soldiers marching in Petrograd, March 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 25Russian troops meeting German troops in No Man's Land (from Russian Revolution)
Image 26Forward gun of Aurora that fired the signal shot (from October Revolution)
Image 27Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements (from Russian Revolution)
Image 28Revolutionaries attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the February Revolution (from Russian Revolution)
Image 29From left to right, the Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill confer in Tehran, 1943 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 30Lenin, Trotsky and Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from October Revolution)
Image 31A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters. (from October Revolution)
Image 32Residents of Leningrad leave their homes destroyed by German bombing. About 1 million civilians died during the 871-day Siege of Leningrad, mostly from starvation. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 33Petrograd Milrevcom proclamation about the deposing of the Russian Provisional Government (from October Revolution)
Image 34Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 35Soldiers blocking Narva Gate on Bloody Sunday (from Russian Revolution)
Image 36Map showing the greatest territorial extent of the Soviet Union and the sovereign states that it dominated politically, economically and militarily in 1960, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961 (total area: c. 35,000,000 km²) (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 37Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (left) with US President John F. Kennedy in Vienna, 3 June 1961 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 38Five Marshals of the Soviet Union in 1935. Only two of them—Budyonny and Voroshilov—survived the Great Purge. Blyukher, Yegorov and Tukhachevsky were executed. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 39The Battle of Stalingrad, considered by many historians as a decisive turning point of World War II (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 40Bolshevik (1920) by Boris Kustodiev (from October Revolution)
Image 41T-80 tank on Red Square during the August Coup (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 42The Pan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 43A revolutionary meeting of Russian soldiers in March 1917 in Dalkarby of Jomala, Åland (from Russian Revolution)
Image 44Anniversary of October Revolution in Riga, Soviet Union in 1988 (from October Revolution)
Image 45The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 46Country emblems of the Soviet Republics before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (fifth in the second row) no longer exists as a political entity of any kind and the emblem is unofficial.) (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 47Internally displaced Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh, 1993 (from History of the Soviet Union)

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Selected anniversaries for February

Soviet Army Day - 23 February - formation of the Red Army in February 1918. Unlike others, it was not an official holiday.

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More Did you know (auto generated)

... that in the 1917 Moscow District Duma elections, the Bolshevik Party won 97 percent of the votes of the soldiers at the heavy artillery workshops?
... that Wu Zhong was recognized as the youngest general in the Chinese People's Liberation Army after the first holder was stripped of the title following his emigration to the Soviet Union?
... that Soviet academic Lily Golden researched "officially disapproved" genres of contemporary Black music?
... that Australian train driver Bill Morrow received the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize alongside Fidel Castro?
... that All Nations Baptist Church in New York City is primarily associated with ethnic Koreans of the former Soviet Union?
... that the literary magazine Adabijoti Soveti was the sole remaining publication in the Jewish-Bukharian language by the time of the switch to the Cyrillic script in 1939–1940?

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2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515
Alexei Leonov
Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration
German instrument of surrender2
Instrument of surrender Japan2
Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending the Second World War
Maxim Gorky LOC Restored edit1
Moscow Elektrozavodskaya metro station asv2018-09
Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2
RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01
Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration
Russian Imperial Family 1913
USS Yorktown collision
Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W)
Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration
Yury Pen - Portrait of Marc Chagall

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German instrument of surrender2 (2009-05-07)
Instrument of surrender Japan2 (2009-09-02)
Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W) (2010-05-08)
USS Yorktown collision (2011-02-12)
Maxim Gorky LOC Restored edit1 (2013-03-28)
Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration (2020-03-09)
Alexei Leonov (2020-03-18)
Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration (2020-05-08)
RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01 (2020-06-08)
Moscow Elektrozavodskaya metro station asv2018-09 (2022-02-26)
Russian Imperial Family 1913 (2022-07-17)
Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending the Second World War (2022-09-02)
2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515 (2023-04-18)
Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2 (2023-07-25)
Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration (2025-05-02)

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