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- DictionarySo·vi·et Un·ion/ˌsōvēət ˈyo͞onyən/
- 1. a former federation of communist republics that occupied the northern half of Asia and part of eastern Europe; capital, Moscow. Created from the Russian empire in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union was the largest country in the world. After World War II, it emerged as a superpower that rivaled the US and led to the Cold War. After decades of repression and economic failure, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved in 1991. Some of its constituents joined a looser confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States.
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4 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 capital was Moscow, then and now the capital of Russia.
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.
- 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
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.
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.
Aug 2, 2019 · The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (also known as the USSR or the Soviet Union) consisted of Russia and 14 surrounding countries. The USSR's territory stretched from the Baltic states in Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean, including the majority of northern Asia and portions of central Asia.
- Matt Rosenberg
The Soviet Union officialy Union of Soviet Socialist Republics also known as USSR [3] was the Russian state after end of Tsarist Period and the world's first single-party Marxist–Leninist state from 1922 until 1991. It was the first country to declare itself socialist and build towards a communist society.
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.
