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. During its existence, it was the
largest country by area , extending across
eleven time zones and sharing
borders with twelve countries , and the
third-most populous country . An overall successor to the
Russian Empire , it was nominally organized as a
federal union of
national republics , the largest and most populous of which was the
Russian SFSR . In practice,
its government and
economy were
highly centralized . As a
one-party state governed by the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was a flagship
communist state . Its capital and largest city was
Moscow .
The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin , established the Russian SFSR , the world's first constitutionally socialist state . The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic , resulting in the Russian Civil War . The Russian SFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth but contributed to a famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system of the Gulag was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact , but in 1941, 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 , suffering an estimated 27 million casualties , which accounted for most Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war , the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army , forming satellite states , and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower .
Geopolitical tensions with the United States 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, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955. Neither side 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 Nikita Khrushchev , which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China . During the 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded its efforts in space exploration and took a 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 . In 1985, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev , sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost perestroika overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes , and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to preserve the country as a renewed federation , an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the largest republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede. On 26 December, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union . Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the Russian SFSR, 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 Soviet Union 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. (
Full article... )
Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards. On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev , the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union , died at the age of 75 after suffering heart failure following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11 November simultaneously by Soviet radio and television. Brezhnev was given a state funeral after three full days of national mourning, then buried in an individual tomb on Red Square at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis . Yuri Andropov , Brezhnev's eventual successor as general secretary, was chairman of the committee in charge of managing Brezhnev's funeral, held on 15 November 1982, five days after his death.
The funeral was attended by forty‑seven heads and deputy heads of state, twenty‑three heads and deputy heads of government, forty heads of foreign government ministries, six leaders of foreign legislatures, and five princes. Most of the world's Communist party-led nations in 1982 were represented, while forty‑seven Communist parties from countries where the party was not in power also sent representatives. United States President Ronald Reagan sent Vice President George H. W. Bush . Eulogies were given by Yuri Andropov, Dmitry Ustinov , Anatoly Alexandrov , Viktor Pushkarev, and Alexei Gordienko . (Full article...
Portrait of Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
“
Generalissimo Stalin directed every move ... made every decision ... He is the greatest and wisest military genius who ever lived...
”
Samantha Reed Smith peace activist and child actress from Manchester, Maine , who became famous for her anti-war outreaches during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union . In 1982, Smith wrote a letter to the newly appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Yuri Andropov , and received a personal reply with an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, which she accepted.
Smith attracted extensive media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador ", becoming known as America's Youngest Ambassador and subsequently participating in peacemaking activities in Japan. With the assistance of her father, Arthur (an academic), she wrote a book titled Journey to the Soviet Union , which chronicled her visit to the country. She later became a child actress, hosting a child-oriented special on the 1984 United States presidential election for The Disney Channel and playing a co-starring role in the television series Lime Street Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 , which crashed short of the runway on final approach to the Auburn/Lewiston Municipal Airport in Maine. (Full article...
The following are images from various Soviet Union-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 3 Bolshevik (1920) by
Boris Kustodiev (from
October Revolution )
Image 4 European theatre of the
Russian Civil War in 1918 (from
October Revolution )
Image 5 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 6 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
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 7 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
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 8 The elections to the
Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won 24% of the vote. (from
October Revolution )
Image 9 Russian
peasants holding
banners of Lenin (left),
Marx (centre) and Trotsky (right) in early
Soviet Russia . (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 10 Provisional Government 's volunteer soldiers secure Petrograd's
Palace Square with the
Austin Armoured Car , summer 1917. (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 11 The
Pan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border. (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 12 Petrograd
Milrevcom proclamation about the deposing of the
Russian Provisional Government (from
October Revolution )
Image 13 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
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 14 Murder of the Romanov family,
Le Petit Journal (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 15 A revolutionary meeting of Russian soldiers in March 1917 in Dalkarby of
Jomala ,
Åland (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 16 American, British, and Japanese Troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support to the White Army. (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 17 The
Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million people.
(from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 18 Anniversary of October Revolution in
Riga , Soviet Union in 1988 (from
October Revolution )
Image 19 Russian Civil War in the European part of Russia (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 20 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
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 21 Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 22 A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters. (from
October Revolution )
Image 25 Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev (left) with US President
John F. Kennedy in Vienna, 3 June 1961 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 26 Soviet general secretary
Leonid Brezhnev and US President
Jimmy Carter sign the
SALT II arms limitation treaty in Vienna on 18 June 1979. (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 27 The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 28 "Pogrom in the Winter Palace" by
Ivan Vladimirov (from
October Revolution )
Image 29 The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 30 Russian troops meeting German troops in No Man's Land (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 31 The
Battle of Stalingrad , considered by many historians as a decisive turning point of World War II (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 32 Russian troops in trenches awaiting a German attack (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 33 Revolutionaries attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the February Revolution (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 34 Internally displaced Azerbaijanis from
Nagorno-Karabakh , 1993 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 35 Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 36 Map showing the greatest territorial extent of the Soviet Union and the sovereign 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
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 37 Lenin ,
Trotsky and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from
October Revolution )
Image 39 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
History of the Soviet Union )
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 Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 42 Forward gun of
Aurora that fired the signal shot (from
October Revolution )
Image 43 Lenin ,
Trotsky , and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the
October Revolution (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 44 Soldiers marching in
Petrograd , March 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 46 Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 48 Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with US President
Ronald Reagan (
left ), 1985 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Selected anniversaries for December
(auto generated)
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs ) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{ WikiProject Soviet Union }} ) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.
2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515
Alexei Leonov
Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration
German instrument of surrender2
Instrument of surrender Japan2
Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending the Second World War
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Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2
RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01
Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration
Russian Imperial Family 1913
USS Yorktown collision
Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W)
Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration
Yury Pen - Portrait of Marc Chagall
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German instrument of surrender2 (2009-05-07)
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Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W) (2010-05-08)
USS Yorktown collision (2011-02-12)
Maxim Gorky LOC Restored edit1 (2013-03-28)
Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration (2020-03-09)
Alexei Leonov (2020-03-18)
Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration (2020-05-08)
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Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending the Second World War (2022-09-02)
2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515 (2023-04-18)
Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2 (2023-07-25)
Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration (2025-05-02)
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