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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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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

The Albanian–Soviet split was the gradual worsening of relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People's Republic of Albania, which occurred in the 1956–1961 period as a result of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with Yugoslavia along with his "Secret Speech" and subsequent de-Stalinization, including efforts to extend these policies into Albania as was occurring in other Eastern Bloc states at the time.

However, the Albanian–Soviet split did not become public until 1960, when, during the Bucharest Conference of Representatives of Communist and Workers Parties, the Albanian delegation, led by Hysni Kapo, did not support Khrushchev's ideological views on the Sino-Soviet split. (Full article...)

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Two men sign papers at opposite sides of a table in a small office.

Credit: WSOY kuva-arkisto

Ivan Maisky signs the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact on 21 January 1932.

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Did you know... - show different entries

... that the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, first formed in 1920, has since been renamed three times, most recently as the Udmurt Republic in 1991?

... that the February 9, 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Central Powers that helped clear Bolshevik forces from Ukraine?

... that members of Sub-Carpathian Reformed Church were persecuted by communists in the Soviet Union and were sent to Gulag labour camps in Siberia?

... 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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“

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

”

— Andrei Gromyko, talking about Soviet foreign affairs

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Soviet Union

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Ivan Khristoforovich Bagramyan, also known as Hovhannes Khachaturi Baghramyan (2 December [O.S. 20 November] 1897 – 21 September 1982), was a Soviet military commander of Armenian origin who held the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. As commander of the Baltic Front, he participated in the offensives which pushed German forces out of the Baltic republics.

During World War II, Bagramyan was the second non-Slavic military officer, after Latvian Max Reyter, to become a commander of a front. He was among several Armenians in the Soviet Army who held the highest proportion of high-ranking officers in the Soviet military during the war. (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 Guy Burgess Sergo Ordzhonikidze Vladimir Lenin

General images

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

Image 1Russian troops in trenches awaiting a German attack (from Russian Revolution)
Image 2Revolutionaries attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the February Revolution (from Russian Revolution)
Image 3The Battle of Stalingrad, considered by many historians as a decisive turning point of World War II (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 4The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 5Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements (from Russian Revolution)
Image 6Internally displaced Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh, 1993 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 7Forward gun of Aurora that fired the signal shot (from October Revolution)
Image 8The 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 9Nikolai Podgorny visiting Tampere, Finland on 16 October 1969 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 10Cruiser Aurora (from October Revolution)
Image 11Soviet 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 12Petrograd Milrevcom proclamation about the deposing of the Russian Provisional Government (from October Revolution)
Image 13The 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 14Anniversary of October Revolution in Riga, Soviet Union in 1988 (from October Revolution)
Image 15Russian Civil War in the European part of Russia (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 16The Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million people.
(from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 17The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold (from Russian Revolution)
Image 18Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (left) with US President John F. Kennedy in Vienna, 3 June 1961 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 19The elections to the Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won 24% of the vote. (from October Revolution)
Image 20American, British, and Japanese Troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support to the White Army. (from Russian Revolution)
Image 21From 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 22The Pan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border. (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 23Country 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 24Bolshevik (1920) by Boris Kustodiev (from October Revolution)
Image 25European theatre of the Russian Civil War in 1918 (from October Revolution)
Image 26Russian troops meeting German troops in No Man's Land (from Russian Revolution)
Image 27A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters. (from October Revolution)
Image 28Lenin, Trotsky and Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from October Revolution)
Image 29Soldiers marching in Petrograd, March 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 30T-80 tank on Red Square during the August Coup (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 31Map 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 32Provisional Government's volunteer soldiers secure Petrograd's Palace Square with the Austin Armoured Car, summer 1917. (from Russian Revolution)
Image 33Soldiers blocking Narva Gate on Bloody Sunday (from Russian Revolution)
Image 34Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 35Soviet painting Vladimir Lenin, by Isaac Brodsky (from Russian Revolution)
Image 36Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with US President Ronald Reagan (left), 1985 (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 37Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from History of the Soviet Union)
Image 38"Pogrom in the Winter Palace" by Ivan Vladimirov (from October Revolution)
Image 39On 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 40Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917 (from October Revolution)
Image 41Murder of the Romanov family, Le Petit Journal (from Russian Revolution)
Image 42Stalin 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 43The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917 (from October Revolution)
Image 44Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917 (from Russian Revolution)
Image 45A revolutionary meeting of Russian soldiers in March 1917 in Dalkarby of Jomala, Åland (from Russian Revolution)
Image 46Five 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 47Residents 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)

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Selected anniversaries for December

USSR Constitution Day - 5 December - was the constitution day before the Brezhnev Constitution.

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More Did you know (auto generated)

... that 1920s belles-lettres books published by the State Publishing House of Ukraine sold out more rapidly than similar books published elsewhere in the Soviet Union, despite the higher average price?
... that the newspaper Qizil Tugh (Red Banner) provided a publishing platform for young Uyghur-language poets and writers in the Soviet Union?
... that Dusko Doder reported the 1984 death of Yuri Andropov, the leader of the Soviet Union, before any official announcement?
... that Hometown Village is a community of Sakhalin Koreans who were finally allowed to return to South Korea after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
... that a 1955 satirical comedy play by Kasymaly Jantöshev was one of the first signs of the relaxation of Soviet literary restrictions after the death of Joseph Stalin?
... that after being made of reinforced concrete to conform with orders from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Monument to the Founders of Kyiv (depicted) partially collapsed?

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This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Soviet Union}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

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List of spacewalks and moonwalks 1965–1999

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Featured pictures

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

Picture of the day pictures

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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