Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Союз Советских Социалистических Республик Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (in Russian; for names of the Soviet Union in other official languages, see this list)[1]
1922–1991
Flag (1955–1991) State Emblem (1956–1991)
Motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! "Workers of the world, unite!"
Anthem: Интернационал "The Internationale" (1922–1944) Государственный гимн СССР[a] "State Anthem of the Soviet Union" (1944–1991)
The Soviet Union during the Cold War
Capital and largest city	Moscow 55°45′N 37°37′E / 55.750°N 37.617°E / 55.750; 37.617
Official languages	Russian[b]
Recognised regional languages	Ukrainian Belarusian Uzbek Kazakh Georgian Azerbaijani Lithuanian Moldavian (Romanian) Latvian Kyrgyz Tajik Armenian Turkmen Estonian
Ethnic groups (1989)	70% East Slavs 17% Turkic 13% other
Religion	Secular state (de jure) State atheism (de facto)
Demonym(s)	Soviet
Government	See: Government of the Soviet Union
CPSU Leader
• 1922–1924	Vladimir Lenin[c]
• 1924–1953	Joseph Stalin[d]
• 1953[f]	Georgy Malenkov[e]
• 1953–1964	Nikita Khrushchev[g]
• 1964–1982	Leonid Brezhnev[h]
• 1982–1984	Yuri Andropov
• 1984–1985	Konstantin Chernenko
• 1985–1991	Mikhail Gorbachev[i]
Head of State
• 1922–1946 (first)	Mikhail Kalinin[j]
• 1988–1991 (last)	Mikhail Gorbachev[k]
Premier
• 1922–1924 (first)	Vladimir Lenin[l]
• 1991 (last)	Ivan Silayev[m]
Legislature	Congress of Soviets (1922–1936)[n] Supreme Soviet (1936–1991)
• Upper house	Soviet of Nationalities (1936–1991) Soviet of Republics (1991)
• Lower house	Soviet of the Union (1936–1991)
Historical era	Interwar period World War II Cold War
• October Revolution	7 November 1917
• Treaty of Creation	30 December 1922
• End of the Civil War	16 June 1923
• First constitution	31 January 1924
• Second constitution	5 December 1936
• Westward expansion	1939–1940
• Great Patriotic War	1941–1945
• Foundation of the UN	24 October 1945
• De-Stalinization	25 February 1956
• Last constitution	9 October 1977
• Secession of Lithuania	11 March 1990
• August Coup	19–22 August 1991
• Belovezh Accords	8 December 1991[o]
• Dissolution	26 December 1991[p]
Area
• Total	22,402,200 km2 (8,649,500 sq mi) (1st)
• Water	2,767,198 km2 (1,068,421 sq mi)
• Water (%)	12.3
Population
• 1989 census	286,730,819[2] (3rd)
• Density	12.7/km2 (32.9/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	1990 estimate
• Total	$2.7 trillion (2nd)
• Per capita	$9,000
GDP (nominal)	1990 estimate
• Total	$2.7 trillion[3] (2nd)
• Per capita	$9,000 (28th)
Gini (1989)	0.275 low
HDI (1990 formula)	0.920[4] very high
Currency	Soviet ruble (Rbl) (SUR)
Time zone	(UTC+2 to +12)
Driving side	right
Calling code	+7
ISO 3166 code	SU
Internet TLD	.su[q]
Preceded by Succeeded by 1922: Russian SFSR Ukrainian SSR Byelorussian SSR Transcaucasian SFSR 1940: Estonia Latvia Lithuania 1990: Lithuania 1991: Georgia Estonia Latvia Ukraine Moldova Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Tajikistan Armenia Azerbaijan Turkmenistan Belarus Russian Federation Kazakhstan

Part of a series on the
History of the Soviet Union
Background Communism Bolshevism World revolution Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Bolshevik split Bolshevik Party Russian Empire World War I February Revolution
1917–1927: Establishment October Revolution Russian Civil War Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Red Terror War communism New Economic Policy Treaty on the Creation of the USSR National delimitation Death and funeral of Lenin
1927–1953: Stalinism Socialism in one country Collectivization Soviet famine of 1932–1933 Holodomor Kazakhstan famine of 1932–1933 Industrialization Cultural Revolution Great Purge Moscow Trials World War II Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Great Patriotic War Operation Barbarossa Occupation of the Baltic states Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Battle of Berlin Soviet invasion of Manchuria Soviet deportations Soviet famine of 1946–1947 Cold War Berlin Blockade Korean War First Indochina War Death and funeral of Stalin
1953–1964: Khrushchev Thaw East German uprising of 1953 Virgin Lands campaign 1954 transfer of Crimea Khrushchev Thaw De-Stalinization ""On the Cult of Personality" We will bury you 1956 Georgian demonstrations Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Wage reforms Peaceful coexistence Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution Sino-Soviet split Space program Cuban Missile Crisis
1964–1982: Era of Stagnation Brezhnev Doctrine Era of Stagnation 50th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide protests Six-Day War Détente Vietnam War Laotian Civil War Operation Menu Cambodian Civil War Fall of Saigon Yom Kippur War Prague Spring Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia Wars in Africa Angolan War of Independence Angolan Civil War Mozambican War of Independence Mozambican Civil War South African Border War Rhodesian Bush War Cambodian–Vietnamese War Soviet–Afghan War 1980 Summer Olympics Olympic boycotts 1980 Olympic boycott 1984 Olympic boycott Polish strike Death and funeral of Brezhnev
1982–1991: Decline and collapse Invasion of Grenada Glasnost Perestroika Chernobyl disaster Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan Singing Revolution Estonian Sovereignty Declaration Baltic Way Lithuanian independence Economic blockade Latvian independence Revolutions of 1989 Pan-European Picnic Peaceful Revolution Fall of the Berlin Wall Velvet Revolution End of communist rule in Hungary Romanian Revolution German reunification Dissolution of the Soviet Union Jeltoqsan First Nagorno-Karabakh War April 9 tragedy Black January Osh riots War of Laws Dushanbe riots January Events The Barricades Referendum Union of Sovereign States August Coup Ukrainian revolution independence declaration referendum Belovezha Accords Alma-Ata Protocol
Soviet leadership Lenin Stalin Malenkov Khrushchev Brezhnev Andropov Chernenko Gorbachev List of troikas
Related topics Culture Economy Education Geography History Leadership Politics Soviet Empire Russia Soviet republics Post-Soviet states
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v t e

The Soviet Union,^[r] officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics^[s] (USSR),^[t] was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. It was a successor state to the Russian Empire that was nominally organized as a federal union of fifteen national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR;^[u] in practice both its government and economy were highly centralized until its final years. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was a flagship communist state.

The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Provisional Government that formed earlier that year following the February Revolution that had dissolved the Russian Empire. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR),^[v] the world's first constitutionally socialist state. The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic, resulting in the Russian Civil War between the Bolsheviks and the anti-communist Whites. As the war progressed in the Bolsheviks' favor, the RSFSR began to incorporate land acquired from the war into various puppet states, which were merged into the Soviet Union in December 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a famine in 1930 to 1933 that killed millions. The forced labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. During the late 1930s, Stalin conducted the Great Purge to remove actual and perceived opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact despite their ideological incongruence; nonetheless, in 1941, Nazi 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 in 1945, suffering an estimated 27 million casualties, which accounted for the majority of Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army, forming various satellite states, and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower.

Following World War II, ideological tensions with the United States eventually 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, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. Neither side ever 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 the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China. During the 1950s, the Soviet Union rapidly expanded its efforts in space exploration and took an early 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 (Venus). The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.

The 1970s saw a brief détente in the Soviet Union's relationship with the United States, but tensions emerged again following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. In 1989, various countries of the Warsaw Pact overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes, and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the entire Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to reform and preserve the country as a renewed federation, an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the three most populous and economically developed republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede from the Union. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the RSFSR, 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 USSR 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.

Etymology

The word soviet is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет), meaning 'council', 'assembly', 'advice',^[w] ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of *vět-iti ('to inform'), related to Slavic věst ('news'), English wise. The word sovietnik means 'councillor'.^[5] Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет). In the Russian Empire, the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers.^[5]

The Soviets as workers' councils first appeared during the 1905 Russian Revolution.^[6][7] Although they were quickly suppressed by the Imperial army, after the February Revolution of 1917, workers' and soldiers' Soviets emerged throughout the country, and shared power with the Russian Provisional Government.^[6][8] The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, demanded that all power be transferred to the Soviets, and gained support from the workers and soldiers.^[9] After the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets,^[8][10] Lenin proclaimed the formation of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR).^[11]

During the Georgian Affair of 1922, Lenin called for the Russian SFSR and other national Soviet republics to form a greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии, tr. Sojuz Sovjetskih Respublik Evropy i Azii).^[12] Joseph Stalin initially resisted Lenin's proposal but ultimately accepted it, and with Lenin's agreement he changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although all republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to the other order until 1936. In addition, in the regional languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukrainian SSR.

СССР (in the Latin alphabet: SSSR) is the abbreviation of the Russian-language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters. The Soviets used this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. After this, the most common Russian initialization is Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR) which essentially translates to Union of SSRs in English. In addition, the Russian short form name Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovjetskij Sojuz, which literally means Soviet Union) is also commonly used, but only in its unabbreviated form. Since the start of the Great Patriotic War at the latest, abbreviating the Russian name of the Soviet Union as СС has been taboo, the reason being that СС as a Russian Cyrillic abbreviation is associated with the infamous Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany, just as SS is in English.

In English-language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. The Russian SFSR dominated the Soviet Union to such an extent that for most of the Soviet Union's existence, it was commonly, but incorrectly, referred to as Russia. According to historian Matthew White, it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was "window dressing" for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were almost always called "Russians", not "Soviets", since "everyone knew who really ran the show".^[13]

History

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