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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.
2 days ago · Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; U.S.S.R.), former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics.
- The Russian Revolution and The Birth of The Soviet Union
- Joseph Stalin
- The Great Purge
- The Cold War
- Khrushchev and De-Stalinization
- Sputnik and The Soviet Space Program
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Collapse of The Soviet Union
- Sources
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The Soviet Union had its origins in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Radical leftist revolutionaries overthrew Russia’s Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of Romanov rule. The Bolsheviks established a socialist state in the territory that was once the Russian Empire. A long and bloody civil war followed. The Red Army, backed by the Bolshevik governm...
Georgian-born revolutionary Joseph Stalinrose to power upon Lenin’s death in 1924. The dictator ruled by terror with a series of brutal policies, which left millions of his own citizens dead. During his reign—which lasted until his death in 1953—Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from an agrarian society to an industrial and military superpower. S...
Amid confusion and resistance to collectivization in the countryside, agricultural productivity dropped. This led to devastating food shortages. Millions died during the Great Famine of 1932-1933. For many years the USSR denied the Great Famine, keeping secret the results of a 1937 census that would have revealed the extent of loss. The Ukrainian f...
Following the surrender of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, the uncomfortable wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States and Great Britain began to crumble. The Soviet Union by 1948 had installed communist-leaning governments in Eastern European countries that the USSR had liberated from Nazi control during the war. The...
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchevrose to power. He became Communist Party secretary in 1953 and premier in 1958. Khrushchev’s tenure spanned the tensest years of the Cold War. He instigated the Cuban Missile Crisisin 1962 by installing nuclear weapons just 90 miles from Florida’s coast in Cuba. At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a...
The Soviets initiated rocketry and space exploration programs in the 1930s as part of Stalin’s agenda for building an advanced, industrial economy. Many early projects were tied to the Soviet military and kept secret, but by the 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for competition between dueling world superpowers. On October 4, 1957, t...
A longtime Communist Party politician, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. He inherited a stagnant economy and a crumbling political system. He introduced two sets of policies he hoped would reform the political system and help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. These policies were called glasnost and perestroika. Gorbachev’...
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union’s push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have a...
Guns or butter problems of the Cold War. CIA Library. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Library of Congress. Sputnik, 1957. U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian.
Learn about the origins, rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the world's first Marxist-Communist state that occupied one-sixth of Earth's land surface. Explore its role in World War II, the Cold War, the space race and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
The history of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, referred to as the Brezhnev Era, covers the period of Leonid Brezhnev's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity, but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation.
- Russia. After the Soviet Union dissolved, its preeminent republic endured political dysfunction and struggled to privatize its central command economy. While oligarchs accumulated great wealth, most Russians faced high inflation and supply shortages.
- Ukraine. Once known as Europe’s breadbasket for its plentiful wheat fields, Ukraine accounted for a quarter of the USSR’s agricultural production. Since independence, the country’s politics have lurched between pro-Russian and pro-European governments.
- Belarus. Soviet vestiges such as the KGB and a highly centralized economy have endured in post-independence Belarus. The country’s only post-Soviet president, Alexander Lukashenko, consolidated near-absolute power through a repressive regime that has allegedly rigged elections, jailed political opponents and silenced the press.
- Moldova. The Moldavian SSR joined the Soviet Union in 1940 after the USSR annexed it following its secret 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. After independence, pro-Russian and pro-EU politicians have vied for control of Moldova.
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.
Aug 2, 2019 · Learn about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a communist country that existed from 1922 to 1991. Find out which countries were part of the USSR, how it ended, and what happened to its former members.
