UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
Coat of arms of the Soviet Union 1
The flag of the Soviet Union
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. It was the
largest country in the world by area , extending across
eleven time zones and sharing
land borders with twelve countries . A successor state to the
Russian Empire , the country was nominally organized as a
federal union of
fifteen national republics , the largest and most populous of which was the
Russian SFSR ; in practice both
its government and
economy were highly
centralized until its final years. It was the
world's third-most populous country and
Europe's most populous country . As a
one-party state governed by the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union , it was a flagship
communist state . Its capital as well its largest city was
Moscow . Other
highly urbanized centers were Leningrad ,
Kiev ,
Tashkent and
Baku .
The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Provisional Government that formed earlier that year following the February Revolution that had dissolved the Russian Empire . The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin , established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally socialist state . The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic , resulting in the Russian Civil War between the Bolsheviks and the anti-communist Whites . As the war progressed in the Bolsheviks' favor, the RSFSR began to incorporate land acquired from the war into various puppet states, which were merged into the Soviet Union in December 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The forced labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. During the late 1930s, Stalin conducted the Great Purge to remove actual and perceived opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact despite their ideological incongruence; nonetheless, in 1941, Nazi 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 in 1945, suffering an estimated 27 million casualties , which accounted for the majority of Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war , the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army , forming various satellite states , and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower .
Following World War II, ideological tensions with the United States eventually 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, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact , in 1955. Neither side ever 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 the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev , which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China . During the 1950s, the Soviet Union rapidly expanded its efforts in space exploration and took an early 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 (Venus ). The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war .
The 1970s saw a brief détente in the Soviet Union's relationship with the United States , but tensions emerged again following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. From 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 entire Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to reform and preserve the country as a renewed federation , an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the three most populous and economically developed republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede from the Union. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union . Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the RSFSR, 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 USSR 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. (
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Welles Declaration, July 23, 1940
The Welles Declaration was a diplomatic statement issued on July 23, 1940, by Sumner Welles , the acting US Secretary of State , condemning the June 1940 occupation by the Soviet army of the three Baltic countries – Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania – and refusing to diplomatically recognize their subsequent annexation into the Soviet Union . It was an application of the 1932 Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force and was consistent with US President Franklin Roosevelt 's attitude towards violent territorial expansion.
The 1940 Soviet invasion was an implementation of its 1939
Nazi-Soviet Pact , which contained a secret protocol by which
Nazi Germany and
Stalinist USSR agreed to partition the independent nations between them. After the pact, the Soviets engaged in a
series of ultimatums and actions ending in the annexation of the Baltic states during the summer of 1940. The area held little strategic importance to the United States, but several legations of the
US State Department established had diplomatic relationships there. The United States and the
United Kingdom anticipated future involvement in the war, but
US non-interventionism and a foreseeable British–Soviet alliance deterred open confrontation over the Baltic states. (
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List of recognized articles
A shiny ball with four sticks
The Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 (replica pictured) was the first artificial satellite to be put into the Earth 's orbit, an event that began the Space Race .
“
Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national program that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.
”
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev [a] (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin 's crimes and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan . He sponsored the early Soviet space program and the enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba , he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power , replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a
metal worker during his youth, and he was a
political commissar during the
Russian Civil War . Under the sponsorship of
Lazar Kaganovich , Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported
Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the
Ukrainian SSR , and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the
Great Patriotic War , Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the
defense of Stalingrad , a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. (
Full article... )
List of selected biographies
The following are images from various Soviet Union-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1 From 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
Soviet Union )
Image 2 Revolutionaries attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the February Revolution (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 3 Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War (from
Soviet Union )
Image 4 Stalin 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
Soviet Union )
Image 5 Map showing greatest territorial extent of the Soviet Union and the 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 km
2 ) (from
Soviet Union )
Image 6 Country 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
Soviet Union )
Image 7 Russian Civil War in the European part of Russia (from
Soviet Union )
Image 8 On 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
Soviet Union )
Image 9 European theatre of the
Russian Civil War in 1918 (from
October Revolution )
Image 10 Construction of the bridge through the
Kolyma (part of the
Road of Bones from
Magadan to
Jakutsk ) by the prisoners of
Dalstroy (from
Soviet Union )
Image 11 T-80 tank on
Red Square during the
August Coup (from
Soviet Union )
Image 12 Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev (left) with US President
John F. Kennedy in Vienna, 3 June 1961 (from
Soviet Union )
Image 13 The
Pan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border. (from
Soviet Union )
Image 14 The
Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million people.
(from
Soviet Union )
Image 15 Provisional Government 's volunteer soldiers secure Petrograd's
Palace Square with the
Austin Armoured Car , summer 1917. (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 16 Russian troops in trenches awaiting a German attack (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 17 Residents 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
Soviet Union )
Image 19 Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with US President
Ronald Reagan (
left ), 1985 (from
Soviet Union )
Image 20 The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 21 Russian troops meeting German troops in No Man's Land (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 22 "Pogrom in the Winter Palace" by
Ivan Vladimirov (from
October Revolution )
Image 24 Petrograd
Milrevcom proclamation about the deposing of the
Russian Provisional Government (from
October Revolution )
Image 25 Soviet general secretary
Leonid Brezhnev and US President
Jimmy Carter sign the
SALT II arms limitation treaty in Vienna on 18 June 1979. (from
Soviet Union )
Image 26 Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 27 The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 28 Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 29 Murder of the Romanov family,
Le Petit Journal (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 30 Internally displaced Azerbaijanis from
Nagorno-Karabakh , 1993 (from
Soviet Union )
Image 31 Cruiser
Aurora (from
October Revolution )
Image 32 Lenin ,
Trotsky and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from
October Revolution )
Image 33 U.S.
Lend Lease shipments to the USSR. During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless
repayment of Lend-Lease . (from
Soviet Union )
Image 34 Forward gun of
Aurora that fired the signal shot (from
October Revolution )
Image 36 The
Soviet famine of 1930–1933 , with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded (from
Soviet Union )
Image 37 Nikolai Podgorny visiting
Tampere ,
Finland on 16 October 1969 (from
Soviet Union )
Image 38 A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters. (from
October Revolution )
Image 39 Anniversary of October Revolution in
Riga , Soviet Union in 1988 (from
October Revolution )
Image 40 The 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 41 Lenin ,
Trotsky and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the
October Revolution (from
Soviet Union )
Image 42 Soldiers marching in
Petrograd , March 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 43 Russian
peasants holding
banners of Lenin (left),
Marx (centre) and Trotsky (right) in early
Soviet Russia . (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 44 Bolshevik (1920) by
Boris Kustodiev (from
October Revolution )
Image 45 Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 46 A revolutionary meeting of Russian soldiers in March 1917 in Dalkarby of
Jomala ,
Åland (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 47 Dissolution of the elected
Russian Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks on 6 January 1918 (from
Soviet Union )
Image 49 The
Battle of Stalingrad , considered by many historians as a decisive turning point of World War II (from
Soviet Union )
Image 50 The 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 52 American, British, and Japanese Troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support to the White Army. (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 53 The elections to the
Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won 24% of the vote. (from
October Revolution )
Selected anniversaries for May
International Labor Day - 1 and 2 May - celebrated with elaborate popular parade in the centre of the major cities
Radio Day - May 7 - is a commemoration of the development of radio in Russia.
Victory Day - 9 May - end of Great Patriotic War, marked by capitulation of Nazi Germany, 1945
More Did you know (auto generated)
... 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 the Lviv branch of the Ukrderzhnatsmenvydav was the main publisher of Polish literature in the Soviet Union by 1941?
... that development of the British UB.109T cruise missile was given "super-priority" in 1951 to ward off an expected attack by the Soviet Union , only to be cancelled after the attack never came?
... that after being arrested for organizing a general strike in 1920, S. Girinis was sent to the Soviet Union following a Soviet-Lithuanian exchange of political prisoners?
... that economist and anti-apartheid activist Vella Pillay arranged for South African revolutionaries to receive military training in the Soviet Union and China?
... that during the first tour to the Soviet Union by any American ballet company, Lupe Serrano danced the first encore in the American Ballet Theatre 's history?
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