Soviet Union

Overview

The Soviet Union — officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) — was a transcontinental communist state that existed from 1922 to 1991, stretching from the Baltic and Black Seas to the Pacific Ocean. At its end it consisted of 15 republics, with Moscow as its capital, and it was by area the world’s largest country. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

It was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under a centrally planned economy, fought Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front in the Second World War, rivalled the United States in the Cold War, launched the first satellite and the first human into space, and dissolved in December 1991 into 15 independent countries. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Library of Congress) Its history runs from the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, through Stalin’s industrialisation and terror, through war and superpower rivalry, to Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the union’s break-up. (Library of Congress)

Formation and the fifteen republics

The Soviet Union was founded by treaty in December 1922, after the Bolsheviks won the civil war that followed the 1917 revolution. Its four founding republics were the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Ukraine, Belorussia (now Belarus), and Transcaucasia, which was later divided into Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Ten more republics were added over time, bringing the total to fifteen, with the Russian republic remaining by far the largest — holding over half the population and three-quarters of the union’s territory. (Encyclopedia.com; Library of Congress) Moscow was the capital of both the Russian republic and the union as a whole. (Encyclopedia.com)

Republic	Note
Armenia	From Transcaucasia
Azerbaijan	From Transcaucasia
Belarus	Founding republic (as Belorussia)
Estonia	Baltic republic; left in spring 1990
Georgia	From Transcaucasia
Kazakhstan	Baikonur launch site; deportation destination
Kyrgyzstan	Deportation destination (as Kirgizia)
Latvia	Baltic republic; left in spring 1990
Lithuania	Baltic republic; left in spring 1990
Moldova	Union republic at dissolution
Russia	Founding republic; largest, over half the population
Tajikistan	Union republic at dissolution
Turkmenistan	Union republic at dissolution
Ukraine	Founding republic
Uzbekistan	Deportation destination

Sources: Encyclopedia.com; NASA; Library of Congress; Teaching American History.

One-party rule and the planned economy

The Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917 by coup, overthrew the provisional democratic government, and ruled by decree through a Communist Party dictatorship enforced with terror. Under Joseph Stalin, decision-making concentrated at the highest party levels, with little input from below. (Library of Congress) Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, adopted in 1928, set extreme targets — a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and 330 percent in heavy industry — nationalised all industry and services, and gave managers output quotas set by central planners. Forced collectivisation swept peasant households into state and collective farms; about one million kulak households were deported, and the disruption produced a catastrophic famine in 1932–33, heaviest in Ukraine. The Great Terror of the 1930s, including the show trials of 1936–38, sent millions of innocent citizens to labour camps or to their deaths, while the Gulag camp system supplied forced labour for canals, railways, and mines. (Library of Congress) After Stalin’s death in 1953, his successors used police terror more sparingly, but strict centralisation continued — and eventually produced the economic decline, inefficiency, and apathy that marked the 1970s and 1980s. (Library of Congress)

The Great Patriotic War

In Russia and the former Soviet republics, the Second World War is remembered as the Great Patriotic War, dated 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa with 3,000,000 German soldiers, eventually joined by more than 500,000 troops from allied countries. (The National WWII Museum) The invasion inflicted horrendous defeats in 1941, but the Soviet defence of Moscow saved the capital, Leningrad endured a 900-day siege without falling, and victories at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1942–43 stripped the initiative from Germany for good. More than 34,000,000 Soviets served in the armed forces, partisan forces behind the lines grew to as many as 500,000, and commanders such as Georgi Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, and Ivan Konev led the road to Berlin. The war cost the USSR 24,000,000 killed, of whom between 8,000,000 and 11,000,000 were combat deaths — the highest toll of any nation that fought. (The National WWII Museum)

Cold War and the space race

After 1945 the Soviet Union and the United States faced each other as rival superpowers in the Cold War. American policy rested on containment of communism, a pillar of foreign policy since the Truman Doctrine of 1947, while the Soviet Union bound its allies in the Warsaw Pact, a collective defence pact. The Soviet Union intervened to protect communist rule abroad, notably in Czechoslovakia in 1968 under the Brezhnev Doctrine, and remained mired in an expensive and increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. (Teaching American History) The rivalry also played out in space. In Poland, the Solidarity labour movement, suppressed by force in 1981, resurged as an opposition party and won control of the legislature in free elections in June 1989, while the Soviet Union stood by. (Teaching American History) On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan, and followed it with the dog Laika aboard Sputnik 2 — opening a space race that led to the creation of NASA. (NASA) On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, when his Vostok 1 spacecraft orbited Earth once in 1 hour 29 minutes. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Reform, Chernobyl, and dissolution

Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, tried to save the system with two reforms: perestroika (restructuring), which eased central planning and cut defence spending, and glasnost (openness), which tolerated limited criticism of the state. But glasnost emboldened nationalities and minorities to demand autonomy and even independence, and the reforms produced no economic miracle — shop queues lengthened and unrest mounted. (Teaching American History; Library of Congress) The Chernobyl disaster of 26 April 1986, when reactor No. 4 exploded and released thirty to forty times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, became a metaphor for a collapsing system built on secrecy and deception. (Library of Congress) In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, communist regimes across Eastern Europe were overturned, and Gorbachev declined to intervene militarily. A hardline coup against him in August 1991 failed after Boris Yeltsin led resistance in Moscow; on 8 December the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine declared that the USSR ceased to exist, Gorbachev resigned on 25 December, and the Supreme Soviet recognised the break-up the next day. (Teaching American History; Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Frequently asked questions

When did the Soviet Union exist? The Soviet Union existed from 1922 to 1991. It was founded by treaty in December 1922 from four republics, and it dissolved in December 1991, when its leaders declared the union extinct and Gorbachev resigned as president on 25 December.

How many republics made up the Soviet Union? Fifteen at the end. The four founding republics were Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, and Transcaucasia; ten more were added over time, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The last of these changes left a union of fifteen republics stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific.

Why did the Soviet Union collapse? No single cause explains it. Its sources name intertwined political, economic, and social factors: stagnation and consumer shortages, Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika reforms, rising nationalism, the failed August 1991 coup, and republics declaring independence, together with the strain of the arms race and the war in Afghanistan.

What was the Great Patriotic War? The Great Patriotic War is the name used in Russia and the former Soviet republics for the Soviet–German war of 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It included Operation Barbarossa, the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, and the Soviet advance to Berlin.

What were the Soviet Union’s great space firsts? On 4 October 1957 it launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, from Baikonur in Soviet Kazakhstan. On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, orbiting Earth once in Vostok 1 in 1 hour 29 minutes.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not give a single cause for the dissolution; the sources describe intertwined political, economic, and social factors, and the profile reports them without ranking one above the rest.
• It does not present a settled total for Soviet war dead beyond the National WWII Museum’s figure of 24 million killed; published estimates vary, and the profile does not adjudicate between them.
• It does not treat the union republics as sovereign in practice; the union was federal in form but highly centralised in fact, with real power held by the Communist Party in Moscow.
• It does not adjudicate between characterisations of the system — “totalitarian” in the Library of Congress exhibit, “highly centralised and authoritarian” in Britannica — and uses each source’s own framing.
• It does not cover daily life, culture, sport, or science in depth; its sources concentrate on government, economy, war, rivalry, and collapse, and the profile stays within what they support.