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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Other namesСоюз Советских Социалистических Республик Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik
1922–1991
Flag State Emblem
Motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Translit.: Proletarii vsekh stran, soyedinyaytes'!) English: Workers of the world, unite!
Anthem: The Internationale (1922–1944) Hymn of the Soviet Union (1944–1991)
The Soviet Union after World War II
Capitaland largest city	Moscow
Common languages	Russian, many others
Religion	State atheism
Demonym(s)	Soviet
Government	Federal socialist republic, Single-party communist state
General Secretary
• 1922–1953 (first)	Joseph Stalin
• 1985–1991 (last)	Mikhail Gorbachev
Premier
• 1923–1924 (first)	Vladimir Lenin
• 1991 (last)	Ivan Silayev
History
• Established	December 30 1922
• Disestablished	December 26 1991
Area
1991	22,402,200 km (8,649,500 sq mi)
Population
• 1991	293,047,571
Currency	Soviet ruble (руб) (SUR) (SUR)
Time zone	UTC+2 to +13
Calling code	7
Internet TLD	.su
Preceded by Succeeded by Russian SFSR Transcaucasian SFSR Ukrainian SSR Byelorussian SSR Tuvan People's Republic Kresy Bessarabia Finnish Karelia Carpathian Ruthenia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Russia Belarus Ukraine Moldova Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Estonia Latvia Lithuania South Ossetia Abkhazia
On December 21, 1991, eleven of the former socialist republics declared in Alma-Ata (with the 12th republic – Georgia – attending as an observer) that with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist. Assigned on September 19, 1990, existing onwards. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania view themselves as continuous and unrelated to the respective Soviet republics. Russia views the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SSRs as legal constituent republics of the USSR and predecessors of the modern Baltic states. The Government of the United States and a number of other countries did not recognize the legal inclusion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the USSR.

Politics of the Soviet Union
Leadership Leaders President list Vice President Collective leadership State Council Presidential Council
Communist Party Congress Central Committee History General Secretary Politburo Secretariat Orgburo
Legislature Congress of Soviets Central Executive Committee Supreme Soviet Soviet of the Union Soviet of Nationalities Presidium Congress of People's Deputies Speaker 1989 Legislative election
Governance Constitution Official names 1924 1936 1977 Government Ministries State Committees Cabinets Premiership First Deputy Premier Deputy Premier Administrator of Affairs
Judiciary Law Supreme Court Military Collegium People's Court Procurator General
Ideology Soviet democracy Marxism–Leninism Leninism Stalinism Khrushchevism De-Stalinization Perestroika Glasnost
Society Economy Agriculture Consumer goods Five-Year Plan Kosygin reform New Economic Policy Science and technology Era of Stagnation Material balance planning Transport War communism Culture Demographics Education Family Phraseology Religion Repression Censorship Censorship of images Great Purge Gulag system Collectivization Human rights Ideological repression Political abuse of psychiatry Political repression Population transfer Propaganda Suppressed research Red Terror Soviet Empire
Soviet Union portal Other countries
v t e

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, romanized: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Template:IPA-ru, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from Советский Союз, Sovetskiy Soyuz. A soviet is a local council, the theoretical basis for the socialist society of the USSR. The Soviet Union was officially a commonwealth of 15 Soviet republics, with Russian SFSR as the largest and dominant member. Because of this dominance, the USSR was often referred to as "Russia" or "Soviet Russia" in the West.

The Soviet Union emerged in the wake of World War I, when the Russian Empire collapsed during the 1917 Russian Revolution. After a chaotic period known as the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin gained power over most of the Russian Empire. After Lenin's death, power eventually went to Josef Stalin, who with his command economy and brutal methods got the country through a large-scale industrialization. In 1941 the country was attacked by Germany, a country the Soviet Union had signed a non-aggression pact with. After four years of war, the Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, extending its influence into much of Eastern Europe. The postwar period was marked by the Cold War, an ideological and political struggle between the USSR and the communist countries of the Eastern Bloc on the one side and the United States and the West on the other side. Throughout the 1980s, it became apparent that the Soviet bloc was losing this fight, and when Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union in 1985, it was clear that fundamental reforms in the social structure was necessary.

The Soviet social system was dominated by the Communist Party, a party based on Marxist-Leninist principles. The Communist Party was the country's state-bearing and the only permitted party. The Secretary of the party was the Soviet Union's most powerful person, and had far more power and influence than the government and parliament. The Soviet Union was the world's largest planned economy, where all aspects of economic life were controlled centrally from the capital, Moscow, among other things, through the so-called five-year plans. The country was characterized by little political freedom; among other things, the KGB actively oversaw much of the community. The country was in its heyday a well-developed social system with well-developed health care and social support.

From 1945 until dissolution in 1991—a period known as the Cold War—the Soviet Union and the United States of America were the two world superpowers that dominated the global agenda of economic policy, foreign affairs, military operations, cultural exchange, scientific advancements including the pioneering of space exploration, and sports (including the Olympic Games and various world championships). The Russian Federation is considered the successor state of the USSR in exercising its rights and fulfilling its obligations. Russia is the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States and a recognised global power, inheriting former Soviet foreign representatives and much of Soviet military.

Geography

The Soviet Union, with 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), was the world's largest state. Covering a sixth of the world's inhabited land, its size could be compared with North America. The western part (in Europe) accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the country's cultural and economic center. The eastern part (in Asia) extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less populated than the European part. It was over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) across (11 time zones) and almost 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) north to south. Its five climatic zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.

The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi). The country bordered North Korea, People's Republic of China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, and Norway. The Bering Strait separated the Soviet Union from the United States. Two thirds of the border was coastline of the Arctic Ocean.

The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. The Soviet Union's highest mountain was Communism Peak (today's Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, lay mainly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.

Demographics

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. It was the third most populous nation (after China and India) for decades. There were 23 cities with more than one million people each in the Soviet Union in 1989. The country's largest city and capital was Moscow with nine million inhabitants.

Ethnic groups

As a 1990 estimate, the majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).

Some nationality groups came into the empire voluntarily, others were brought in by force. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties while, other subjects of the empire did not. Due to multiple nationalities located in the same territory, national antagonisms developed over the years.

For many years, Soviet leaders maintained that the underlying causes of conflict between nationalities had been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family of nations living harmoniously together. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the government conducted a policy of korenizatsiya (indigenization) of local governments in an effort to recruit non-Russians into the new Soviet political institutions and to reduce the conflict between Russians and the minority nationalities.

To increase literacy and mass education, the Soviets encouraged development and publication in many of the languages of minority groups. Russian became a required subject of study in all Soviet schools in 1938; however, in mainly non-Russian areas the chief language of instruction was the local language. This led to widespread bilingualism in the educated population, though smaller nationalities were often linguistically assimilated, in which the members of the nationality lost their historic language.

Religion

The Soviet Union was officially secular, supported atheism in schools, and suppressed religion. The state was separated from church by the Decree of Council of People's Commissars on January 23, 1918. Two-thirds of the Soviet population lacked religious belief while one-third of the people professed religious belief. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. About half of the people, including members of the CPSU and high-level government officials, professed atheism. Government persecution of Christianity continued undiminished until the fall of the Communist government. Only 500 churches, out of the 54,000 before the revolution, remained open in 1941. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly and was far less integral in city dwellers where Party control was optimum.

Language

While everyone could use their own language, Russian was the official and dominant language in the Soviet Union. It was used in industry, military, party, and state management.

Life expectancy

After the communist takeover of power the life expectancy for all age groups went up. The trend continued into the 60s, when the life expectancy in the Soviet Union went beyond the life expectancy in the United States. In 1964 the trend reversed. Life expectancy went down dramatically for men because of alcohol abuse and poor health care.

Emigration

Despite the strict rules that would prevent emigration, there were many Soviet citizens who wanted to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The desire to emigrate elsewhere applied especially to the Jewish community of USSR, as they often felt alienated by the anti-Semitic attitudes in society and sometimes even anti-Jewish campaigns of the Soviet State.

History

The Soviet Union is traditionally considered to be the successor of the Russian Empire and of its short-lived successor, The Provisional Government under Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov and then Alexander Kerensky. The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled until March 1917, when the Empire was overthrown and a short-lived Russian provisional government took power, the latter to be overthrown in November 1917 by Vladimir Lenin.

From 1917 to 1922, the predecessor to the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was an independent country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (colloquially known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by Bolshevik parties.

Revolution and the foundation of a Soviet state

Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was abolished in 1861, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar resisted attempts to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.

A spontaneous popular uprising in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the "February Revolution" and the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Provisional Government, whose leaders intended to conduct elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue participating on the side of the Entente in World War I.

At the same time, to ensure the rights of the working class, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the "October Revolution," they seized power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers. But, by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Only after the long and bloody Russian Civil War was the new Soviet power secure. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included foreign intervention and the execution of Nicholas II and his family. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed and split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania.

Early relationship with Nationalist China

The Qing Dynasty, the last of the ruling Chinese dynasties, collapsed in 1911 and China was left under the control of several major and lesser warlords during the "Warlord era." To defeat these warlords, who had seized control of much of Northern China, the anti-monarchist and national unificationist Kuomintang (KMT) party and the President of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen, sought the help of foreign powers.

However, Sun's efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored. In 1921, Sun turned to the Soviet Union. For political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both the KMT and the newly established Communist Party of China (CPC). The USSR hoped for Communist consolidation, but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. Thus the struggle for power in China began between the KMT and the CPC. In 1923, a joint statement by Sun and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's unification.

Unification of the Soviet Republics

On December 28, 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations – Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory Petrovsky, Aleksandr Chervyakov respectively on December 30, 1922.

On February 1, 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).

The intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises. The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.

Stalin's rule

From its beginning years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).

Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary because it ensured that 'capitalist exploitation' would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to contend for power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" composed of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.

On 3 April 1922, Stalin had been named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin to be the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, known by the acronym Rabkrin, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and out-maneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union by the end of the 1920s establishing totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. While encompassing the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the course of the Revolution, it also aimed for building socialism in one country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization; in agriculture collective farms were established all over the country.

Famines occurred, causing millions of deaths and surviving kulaks were politically persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. A wide range of death tolls has been suggested, from as many as 60 million kulaks being killed (suggested by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) to as few as 700 thousand (according to Soviet news sources).

Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin's Great Purge of the party killed many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. Yet despite the turmoil of the mid- to late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II.

The 1930s

The early 1930s saw closer cooperation between the West and the USSR. From 1932 to 1934, the Soviet Union participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established. In September 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists. The Nationalists were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new Soviet Constitution. This constitution provided economic rights not included in constitutions in the western democracies. The constitution was seen as a personal triumph for Stalin, who on this occasion was described by Pravda as "genius of the new world, the wisest man of the epoch, the great leader of communism." By contrast, western historians and historians from former Soviet occupied countries have seen the constitution as a meaningless propaganda document.

The late 1930s saw a shift towards the Axis powers. In 1938 and 1939, armed forces of the USSR won several decisive victories during border clashes with the armed forces of the Japanese Empire. In 1938, after the United Kingdom and France concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the USSR dealt with Germany as well.

World War II

The USSR dealt with Germany both militarily and economically during extensive talks and by concluding the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement. The conclusion of the nonaggression pact made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November of the same year, unable to force the Republic of Finland into agreement to move its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad by diplomatic means, Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland. On April 1941, USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

Although it has been debated whether the Soviet Union had the intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough, Germany itself broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and started what was known in the USSR as the "Great Patriotic War." The Red Army stopped the initial German offensive during the Battle of Moscow. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, was a major defeat for the Germans and became a major turning point of the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The same year, the USSR, in fulfilment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945 and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on August 9, 1945. This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World war II. Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged victorious from the conflict and became an acknowledged military superpower.

The Cold War

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. The Soviet Union aided post-war reconstruction in the countries of Eastern Europe while turning them into Soviet satellite states, founded the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Later, the Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Communists in the People's Republic of China, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, the rising tension of the Cold War turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into enemies.

Post-Stalin period

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. In the absence of an acceptable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly. Nikita Khrushchev, who had won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression in 1956 and eased repressive controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.

At the same time, Soviet military force was used to suppress nationalistic and anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956. During this period, the Soviet Union continued to realize scientific and technological pioneering exploits; to launch the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; a living dog, Laika; and later, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into Earth's orbit. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, and Alexey Leonov became the first person to walk in space on March 18, 1965. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy towards China and the United States suffered difficulties, including those that led to the Sino-Soviet split. Khrushchev was retired from power in 1964.

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the West while at the same time building up Soviet military strength; the arms buildup contributed to the demise of Détente in the late 1970s.

In October 1977, at the Seventh (Special) Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Ninth Convocation, the third and last Soviet Constitution, also known as the "Brezhnev Constitution," was unanimously adopted. The official name of the Constitution was "Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." This was the first Soviet Constitution which explicitly stated the supremacy of the Communist Party.

In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill" , with an aging and ossified top political leadership.

After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid-1960s, the Soviet leadership reverted to established means of economic management. Industry showed slow but steady gains during the 1970s. Agricultural development continued, but could not keep up with the growing consumption and the USSR had to import food products like grain. Because of the low investment in consumer goods, the USSR was largely only able to export raw materials, notably oil, which made it vulnerable to global price shifts. Moreover, human welfare in the Soviet Union was keeping behind Western levels, after initially converging in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in absolute measurements, Soviet citizens were becoming less healthy between the 1960s and 1985: the crude death rate climbed from 6.9 per 1,000 in 1964 to 10.3 in 1980.

Reforms of Gorbachev and collapse of the Soviet Union

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit from selling their oil, so that the USSR's hard currency reserves became depleted.

After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, transitional figures with deep roots in Brezhnevite tradition, beginning in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy (see Perestroika, Glasnost) and the party leadership. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. With the Soviet Union in bad economic shape and its satellite states in eastern Europe abandoning communism, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War.

In 1988, the Soviet Union abandoned its nine-year war with Afghanistan and began to withdraw forces from the country. In the late 1980s, Gorbachev refused to send military support to defend the Soviet Union's former satellite states, resulting in multiple communist regimes in those states being forced from power. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East Germany and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain took the final blow.

In the late 1980s, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, citing Article 72 of the USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. On April 7, 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of that republic's residents vote for secession on a referendum. Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws."

In 1989, the Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about half of the population) convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Congress. On June 12, 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued throughout 1991 as constituent republics slowly became de facto independent.

A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on March 17, 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Union in nine out of 15 republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and, in the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by eight republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation.

The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline Communist Party members of the government and the KGB, who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin—who had publicly opposed it—came out as a hero while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared restoration of full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example), while the other twelve republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union.

On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the Belavezha Accords to dissolve the Union, on December 21, 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia, including those republics that had signed the Belavezha Accords, signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dismemberment and consequential extinction of the USSR and restated the establishment of the CIS. The summit of Alma-Ata also agreed on several other practical measures consequential to the extinction of the Union. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev yielded to the inevitable and resigned as the president of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that until then were vested in the presidency over to Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia.

The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, recognized the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state. Many organizations such as the Soviet Army and police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992 but were slowly phased out and either withdrawn from or absorbed by the newly independent states.

Politics

The government of the Soviet Union administered the country's economy and society. It implemented decisions made by the leading political institution in the country, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

In the late 1980s, the government appeared to have many characteristics in common with liberal democratic political systems. For instance, a constitution established all organizations of government and granted to citizens a series of political and civic rights. A legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, and its standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, represented the principle of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet, which had an elected chairman who functioned as head of state, oversaw the Council of Ministers, which acted as the executive branch of the government.

The chairman of the Council of Ministers, whose selection was approved by the Supreme Soviet, functioned as head of government. A constitutionally based judicial branch of government included a court system, headed by the Supreme Court, that was responsible for overseeing the observance of Soviet law by government bodies. According to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the government had a federal structure, permitting the republics some authority over policy implementation and offering the national minorities the appearance of participation in the management of their own affairs.

In practice, however, the government differed markedly from Western systems. In the late 1980s, the CPSU performed many functions that governments of other countries usually perform. For example, the party decided on the policy alternatives that the government ultimately implemented. The government merely ratified the party's decisions to lend them an aura of legitimacy.

The CPSU used a variety of mechanisms to ensure that the government adhered to its policies. The party, using its nomenklatura authority, placed its loyalists in leadership positions throughout the government, where they were subject to the norms of democratic centralism. Party bodies closely monitored the actions of government ministries, agencies, and legislative organs.

The content of the Soviet Constitution differed in many ways from typical Western constitutions. It generally described existing political relationships, as determined by the CPSU, rather than prescribing an ideal set of political relationships. The Constitution was long and detailed, giving technical specifications for individual organs of government. The Constitution included political statements, such as foreign policy goals, and provided a theoretical definition of the state within the ideological framework of Marxism-Leninism. The CPSU leadership could radically change the constitution or remake it completely, as it did several times throughout its history.

The Council of Ministers acted as the executive body of the government. Its most important duties lay in the administration of the economy. The council was thoroughly under the control of the CPSU, and its chairman—the Soviet prime minister—was always a member of the Politburo. The council, which in 1989 included more than 100 members, was too large and unwieldy to act as a unified executive body. The council's Presidium, made up of the leading economic administrators and led by the chairman, exercised dominant power within the Council of Ministers.

According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enormous legislative power.

In practice, however, the Congress of People's Deputies met infrequently and only to approve decisions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders binding on the population. The Congress of People's Deputies had the authority to ratify these decisions.

Judicial system

The judiciary was not independent from the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union utilized the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where judge, procurator, and defense attorney work collaboratively to establish the truth.

The Soviet state

The Soviet Union was a federal state made up of 15 republics (16 between 1946 and 1956) joined together in a theoretically voluntary union; it was this theoretical situation that formed the basis of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs' membership in the United Nations. In turn, a series of territorial units made up the republics. The republics also contained jurisdictions intended to protect the interests of national minorities. The republics had their own constitutions, which, along with the all-union Constitution, provide the theoretical division of power in the Soviet Union.

All the republics except Russian SFSR had their own communist parties. In 1989, however, the CPSU and the central government retained all significant authority, setting policies that were executed by republic, provincial, oblast, and district governments. In the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, there were two chambers that represented the population (in later constitutions). One was the Soviet of the Union, which represented people indiscriminately, and the Soviet of Nationalities, which represented the various ethnicities in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Leaders

The de facto leader of the Soviet Union was the First Secretary or General Secretary of the CPSU. The head of government was considered the Premier, and the head of state was considered the chairman of the Presidium. The Soviet leader could also have one (or both) of these positions, along with the position of General Secretary of the party. The last leader of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev, serving until 1991.

Foreign relations after World War II

Once denied diplomatic recognition by the free world, the Soviet Union had official relations with practically all nations of the world by the late 1940s. The Soviet Union also had progressed from being an outsider in international organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of the world's fate after World War II. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations).

The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as one of the world's two superpowers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see Eastern Bloc), military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry. The Soviet Union's growing influence abroad in the postwar years helped lead to a Communist system of states in Eastern Europe united by military and economic agreements.

It overtook the British Empire as a global superpower, both in a military sense and its ability to expand its influence beyond its borders. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), 1949–1991, was an economic organization of communist states and a kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent to—but more geographically inclusive than—the European Economic Community. The military counterpart to the Comecon was the Warsaw Pact, though Comecon's membership was significantly wider.

The descriptive term Comecon was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. This usage was sometimes extended as well to bilateral relations among members, because in the system of socialist international economic relations, multilateral accords—typically of a general nature—tended to be implemented through a set of more detailed, bilateral agreements.

Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into satellite states. Soviet troops intervened in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and cited the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet counterpart to the U.S. Johnson Doctrine and later Nixon Doctrine, and helped oust the Czechoslovak government in 1968, sometimes referred to as the Prague Spring.

In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's rapprochement with the West and what Mao perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism led to the Sino-Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Communist movement and Communist regimes in Albania and Cambodia choosing to ally with China in place of the USSR. For a time, war between the former allies appeared to be a possibility; while relations would cool during the 1970s, they would not return to normality until the Gorbachev era.

During the same period, a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The KGB (Committee for State Security) served in a fashion as the Soviet counterpart to both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency in the U.S. It ran a massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union, which was used to monitor violations in law. The foreign wing of the KGB was used to gather intelligence in countries around the globe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was replaced in Russia by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation).

The KGB was not without substantial oversight. The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), not publicized by the Soviet Union until the end of the Soviet era during perestroika, was created by Lenin in 1918 and served both as a centralized handler of military intelligence and as an institutional check-and-balance for the otherwise relatively unrestricted power of the KGB. Effectively, it served to spy on the spies, and, not surprisingly, the KGB served a similar function with the GRU. As with the KGB, the GRU operated in nations around the world, particularly in Soviet bloc and satellite states. The GRU continues to operate in Russia today, with resources estimated by some to exceed those of the SVR.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, and eventually overtook it. It perceived its own involvement as essential to the solution of any major international problem. Meanwhile, the Cold War gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty).

By this time, the Soviet Union had concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the non-Communist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states like India and Egypt. Notwithstanding some ideological obstacles, Moscow advanced state interests by gaining military footholds in strategically important areas throughout the Third World. Furthermore, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World. For all these reasons, Soviet foreign policy was of major importance to the non-Communist world and helped determine the tenor of international relations.

Although myriad bureaucracies were involved in the formation and execution of Soviet foreign policy, the major policy guidelines were determined by the Politburo of the Communist Party. The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy had been the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern Europe. Relations with the United States and Western Europe were also of major concern to Soviet foreign policy makers, and relations with individual Third World states were at least partly determined by the proximity of each state to the Soviet border and to Soviet estimates of its strategic significance.

After Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, he introduced many changes in Soviet foreign policy and in the economy of the USSR. Gorbachev pursued conciliatory policies towards the West instead of maintaining the Cold War status quo. The Soviet Union ended its occupation of Afghanistan, signed strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States, and allowed its allies in Eastern Europe to determine their own affairs. However, soviet republics were treated differently from the satellite states, and troops were used to suppress cessation movements within the Union (see Black January) but ultimately to no avail.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, Russia was internationally recognized to be the legal successor to the Soviet state on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt, and claimed overseas Soviet properties as its own.

To prevent subsequent disputes over Soviet property, "zero variant" agreements were proposed to ratify with newly independent states the status quo on the date of dissolution. (Ukraine is the last former Soviet republic not to have entered into such an agreement.) The end of the Soviet Union also raised questions about treaties it had signed, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; Russia has held the position that those treaties remain in force, and should be read as though Russia were the signatory.

Soviet Socialist Republics

The Soviet Union was a federation that consisted of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR). The first Republics were established shortly after the October Revolution of 1917. At that time, republics were technically independent from one another but their governments acted in closely coordinated confederation, as directed by the CPSU leadership.

In 1922, four Republics (Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belarusian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR) joined into the Soviet Union. Between 1922 and 1940, the number of Republics grew to 16. Some of the new Republics were formed from territories acquired, or reacquired by the Soviet Union, others by splitting existing Republics into several parts. The criteria for establishing new republics were as follows:

1. to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to exercise their right to secession;
2. be economically strong enough to survive on their own upon secession; and
3. be named after the dominant ethnic group which should consist of at least one million people.

The system remained almost unchanged after 1940. No new Republics were established. One republic, Karelo-Finnish SSR, was disbanded in 1956, and the territory formally became the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) within the Russian SFSR. The remaining 15 republics lasted until 1991. Even though Soviet Constitutions established the right for a republic to secede, it remained theoretical and very unlikely, given Soviet centralism, until the 1991 collapse of the Union.

At that time, the republics became independent countries, with some still loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States. Some republics had common history and geographical regions, and were referred by group names. These were Baltic Republics, Transcaucasian Republics, and Central Asian Republics.

Soviet socialist republic	population (1989)	pop./ USSR pop. (%)	area (km²) (1991)	area/ USSR area (%)	pop. density km²	capital	independent state	No.	map
Russian SFSR	147 386 000	51,40	17 075 200	76,62	8,6	Moscow	Russia	1
Ukrainian SSR	51 706 746	18,03	603 700	2,71	85,6	Kiev	Ukraine	2
Uzbekistan SSR	19 906 000	6,94	447 400	2,01	44,5	Tashkent	Uzbekistan	4
Kazakhstan SSR	16 711 900	5,83	2 727 300	12,24	6,1	Almaty	Kazakhstan	5
Belarusian SSR	10 151 806	3,54	207 600	0,93	48,9	Minsk	Belarus	3
Azerbaijan SSR	7 037 900	2,45	86 600	0,39	81,3	Baku	Azerbaijan	7
Georgian SSR	5 400 841	1,88	69 700	0,31	77,5	Tbilisi	Georgia	6
Tajikistan SSR	5 112 000	1,78	143 100	0,64	35,7	Dushanbe	Tajikistan	12
Moldovan SSR	4 337 600	1,51	33 843	0,15	128,2	Chişinău	Moldova	9
Kyrgyzstan SSR	4 257 800	1,48	198 500	0,89	21,4	Frunze	Kyrgyzstan	11
Lithuanian SSR	3 689 779	1,29	65 200	0,29	56,6	Vilna	Lithuania	8
Turkmenistan SSR	3 522 700	1,23	488 100	2,19	7,2	Ashgabat	Turkmenistan	14
Armenian SSR	3 287 700	1,15	29 800	0,13	110,3	Yerevan	Armenia	13
Latvian SSR	2 666 567	0,93	64 589	0,29	41,3	Riga	Latvia	10
Estonian SSR	1 565 662	0,55	45 226	0,20	34,6	Tallinn	Estonia	15

Economy

Prior to its dissolution, the USSR had the second largest economy in the world, after the United States. The economy of the Soviet Union was the modern world's first centrally planned economy. It was based on a system of state ownership and managed through Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply).

The first major project of economic planning was the GOELRO plan, which was followed by a series of other Five-Year Plans. The emphasis was put on a very fast development of heavy industry and the nation became one of the world's top manufacturers of a large number of basic and heavy industrial products, but it lagged behind in the output of light industrial production and consumer durables.

Agriculture of the Soviet Union was organized into a system of collective farms (kolkhozes) and state farms (sovkhozes) but it was relatively unproductive. Crises in the agricultural sector reaped catastrophic consequences in the 1930s, when collectivization met widespread resistance from the kulaks, resulting in a bitter struggle of many peasants against the authorities, and famine, particularly in Ukraine (see Holodomor), but also in the Volga River area and Kazakhstan.

As the Soviet economy grew more complex, it required more and more complex disaggregation of control figures (plan targets) and factory inputs. As it required more communication between the enterprises and the planning ministries, and as the number of enterprises, trusts, and ministries multiplied, the Soviet economy started stagnating.

The Soviet economy was increasingly sluggish when it came to responding to change, adapting cost-saving technologies, and providing incentives at all levels to improve growth, productivity and efficiency. Most information in the Soviet economy flowed from the top down and economic planning was often done on the basis of faulty or outdated information, particularly in sectors with large numbers of consumers.

As a result, some goods tended to be under-produced, leading to shortages, while other goods were overproduced and accumulated in storage. Some factories developed a system of barter and either exchanged or shared raw materials and parts, while consumers developed a black market for goods that were particularly sought after but constantly under-produced.

Conceding the weaknesses of their past approaches in solving new problems, the leaders of the late 1980s, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, were seeking to mold a program of economic reform to galvanize the economy. However, by 1990 the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies to continue. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, almost all of the 15 former Soviet republics have dismantled their Soviet-style economies.

Culture

The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's 70-year existence. During the first eleven years following the Revolution (1918–1929), there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people.

The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.

Later, during Joseph Stalin's rule, Soviet culture was characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of Socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions (e.g. Mikhail Bulgakov's works). Many writers were imprisoned and killed. Also, religious people were persecuted and either sent to Gulags or were murdered by the thousands. The ban on the Orthodox Church was temporarily lifted in the 1940s, in order to rally support for the Soviet war against the invading forces of Germany. Under Stalin, prominent symbols that were not in line with communist ideology were destroyed, such as Orthodox Churches and Tsarist buildings.

Following the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, censorship was diminished. Greater experimentation in art forms became permissible once again, with the result that more sophisticated and subtly critical work began to be produced. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. An underground dissident literature, known as samizdat, developed during this late period. In architecture the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.

In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost significantly expanded freedom of expression in the media and press, eventually resulting in the complete abolishment of censorship, total freedom of expression and freedom to criticise the government.

See also

• Anti-Polish sentiment
• Collapse of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)
• Dates of establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union
• Darkness at Noon
• Droughts and famines in Russia and the Soviet Union
• History of the Soviet Union (1953–1985)
• Human rights in the Soviet Union
• Kaliningrad Oblast (see also: German East Prussia)
• Katyn massacre
• Dekulakization
• List of leaders of the Soviet Union
• Military history of the Soviet Union
• Population transfer in the Soviet Union
• Post-Soviet states
• Premier of the Soviet Union
• President of the Soviet Union
• Prometheism
• Public holidays in the Soviet Union
• Republics of the Soviet Union
• Soviet war in Afghanistan
• Sovietization
• State ideology of the Soviet Union
• Totalitarianism

Notes

1. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
2. ^ Robert Service. Stalin: A Biography. 2004. ISBN 978-0-330-41913-0
3. Crile, George (2003). Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0871138549.
4. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 By Richard Sakwa. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2010-05-16.
5. Mr. David Holloway (1996). Stalin and the Bomb. Yale University Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0300066647. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
6. Turner 1987, p. 23 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFTurner1987 (help)
7. Byrd, Peter (2003). "Cold War (entire chapter)". In McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair (ed.). The concise Oxford dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192802763. Retrieved 2008-06-16.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
8. Garthoof, Raymond L. "The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War" (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1994).
9. Bridget O'Laughlin (1975) Marxist Approaches in Anthropology Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 4: pp. 341–70 (October 1975) (doi:10.1146/annurev.an.04.100175.002013).
   William Roseberry (1997) Marx and Anthropology Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26: pp. 25–46 (October 1997) (doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.25)
10. Encyclopedia Britannica: Russian and Soviet Marxism.
11. Shiman, David (1999). Economic and Social Justice: A Human Rights Perspective. Amnesty International. ISBN 0967533406.
12. Diane Rowland, Alexandre V. Telyukov, Soviet Health Care From Two Perspectives, 1991
13. Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union, History Today
14. Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver. 1984. "Equality, Efficiency, and Politics in Soviet Bilingual Education Policy, 1934–1980," American Political Science Review 78 (December): 1019–1039.
15. The Seeming Paradox of Increasing Mortality in a Highly Industrialized Nation: the Example of the Soviet Union : 1985. author Dinkel, R. H.
16. Domestic Pressures and the Politics of Exit: Trends in Soviet Emigration Policy : 1989-90. author Salitan, Laurie P. page 671-687 url=http://www.jstor.org/pss/2151104
17. Richard Sakwa The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991: 1917–1991. Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-12290-2, 9780415122900. pp. 140–143.
18. Julian Towster. Political Power in the U.S.S.R., 1917–1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State Oxford Univ. Press, 1948. p. 106.
19. Template:Ru icon Voted Unanimously for the Union.
20. Template:Ru icon Creation of the USSR at Khronos.ru.
21. "70 Years of Gidroproekt and Hydroelectric Power in Russia".
22. Template:Ru icon On GOELRO Plan — at Kuzbassenergo.
23. The consolidation into a single-party regime took place during the first three and a half years after the revolution, which included the period of War Communism and an election in which multiple parties competed. See Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917–1922. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1966.
24. Template:Ru icon Mel'tiukhov, Mikhail. Upushchennyi shans Stalina: Sovetskii Soiuz i bor'ba za Evropu 1939–1941. Moscow: Veche, 2000. ISBN 5-7838-1196-3.
25. Denunciation of the neutrality pact April 5, 1945. (Avalon Project at Yale University)
26. Soviet Declaration of War on Japan, August 8, 1945. (Avalon Project at Yale University)
27. W. Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, (Edinburgh, 2003), p. 91.
28. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak.
29. The red blues — Soviet politics by Brian Crozier, National Review, June 25, 1990.
30. Origins of Moral-Ethical Crisis and Ways to Overcome it by V.A.Drozhin Honoured Lawyer of Russia.
31. Encyclopædia Britannica. "inquisitorial procedure (law) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2010-05-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
32. ^ "Main Intelligence Administration (GRU) Glavnoye Razvedovatel'noye Upravlenie – Russia / Soviet Intelligence Agencies". Fas.org. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
33. ^ "The SVR Russia's Intelligence Service". Fas.org. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
34. Country Profile: Russia Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom.
35. Memorandum of Understanding, AcqWeb, February 7, 2007.
36. The Occupation of Latvia: Aspects of History and International Law Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
37. Documents on Estonia Human Rights, United Nations
38. U.S.-Baltic Relations: Celebrating 85 Years of Friendship U.S. Department of State
39. Motion for a resolution on the Situation in Estonia European Parliament
40. European Parliament: Resolution on the situation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (No C 42/78) (1983). Official Journal of the European Communities. European Parliament.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
41. Aust, Anthony (2005). Handbook of International Law. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521530347.
42. Ziemele, Ineta (2005). State Continuity and Nationality: The Baltic States and Russia. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 90-04-14295-9.
43. ^ "1990 CIA World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
44. Rayfield 2004, pp. 317–320.
45. Rayfield 2004, pp. 121–122.
46. "Gorbachev, Mikhail." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Oct. 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037405>. "Under his new policy of glasnost (“openness”), a major cultural thaw took place: freedoms of expression and of information were significantly expanded; the press and broadcasting were allowed unprecedented candour in their reportage and criticism; and the country's legacy of Stalinist totalitarian rule was eventually completely repudiated by the government."

References

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• Armstrong, John A. The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present. New York: Random House, 1961.
• Brown, Archie, et al., eds.: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
• Gilbert, Martin: The Routledge Atlas of Russian History (London: Routledge, 2002).
• Goldman, Minton: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986).
• Grant, Ted: Russia, from Revolution to Counter-Revolution, London, Well Red Publications,1997
• Howe, G. Melvyn: The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey 2nd. edn. (Estover, UK: MacDonald and Evans, 1983).
• Katz, Zev, ed.: Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York: Free Press, 1975).
• Moore, Jr., Barrington. Soviet politics: the dilemma of power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
• Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse, New Society Books, 2008, ISBN 978-0-86571-606-3
• Rayfield, Donald. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. New York: Random House, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-375-50632-2); 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-375-75771-6).
• Rizzi, Bruno: "The bureaucratization of the world : the first English ed. of the underground Marxist classic that analyzed class exploitation in the USSR" , New York, NY : Free Press, 1985.
• Schapiro, Leonard B. The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917–1922. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1966.

External links

• Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey.
• Documents and other forms of media from the Soviet Union: 1917–1991.
• Soviet Union
• Losses Suffered by USSR Armed Forces in Wars, Combat Operations, and Military Conflicts
• Soviet Union Exhibit at Global Museum on Communism with essay by Richard Pipes

v t e Soviet occupations
Europe	Austria Baltic states Estonia Latvia Lithuania Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Bornholm Czechoslovakia Transcarpathia Finland Germany East Prussia Hungary Poland Western Ukraine Western Belorussia Sovietization Romania
Asia	Afghanistan Northern Iran Manchuria Northern half of the Korean Peninsula
Italics indicate countries occupied while the Soviet Union was a member of the Allies of World War II.

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