Soviet Union (USSR)

We explain what the USSR was and what “Soviet” means. Also, the history of the USSR, the Cold War and its dissolution.

What was the USSR?

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, known as the Soviet Union or the USSR for its acronym, was a federal State with a Marxist-Leninist regime ( communist ) which existed between 1922 and 1991. It was one of the two most powerful countries in the world during the so-called Cold War (1947-1991), in which it faced the United States and its Western European allies.

The Soviet Union responded to the ideals of the October Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolshevik Party gained political power after the overthrow of the tsarist regime in Russia.

It was located in the current territory of Russia and fourteen neighboring nations who united in a socialist federation. It came to be made up of the current nations of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Uzbekistan.

Other nations, near and far, were influenced by the USSR and were dominated or protected by it, such as the countries that formed the communist bloc in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) or those that adopted the communist economic system on other continents, such as China (with which a break occurred in the 1950s and 1960s) and Cuba.

See also: Russian Revolution

What does “Soviet” mean?

The country model imposed by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 meant a reorganization of the political administration of Russian territory. The Soviet administration was based on workers' and peasants' committees called soviets (from the Russian “counsels”), which were born in 1905.

The Soviets of workers and soldiers formed the basis of the social organization of the Bolshevik State according to the principle that political power should flow from the bottom up and not the other way around. This principle was the one led to naming the republics that made up the USSR as “Soviet socialist republics”. Each also had a legislative body initially called the Congress of Soviets and, since 1938, the Supreme Soviet.

However, in practice the authorities of the Communist Party exercised a central influence and its leaders concentrated political power. When the USSR was institutionalized in 1922, the soviets lost more and more power and the centralized control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was consolidated under the authority of its general secretary. Formally, the soviets continued to exist until the fall of the Soviet Union.

History of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union It was formally started in December 1922 when the integration treaties of the Soviet socialist republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasia (which at that time included present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) were signed. Later, other republics integrated into the USSR were formed.

The integration that gave rise to the USSR was possible at the end of the stage of “war communism” (1917-1921), when the Bolshevik government managed to recover a large part of the territories that had belonged to the Tsarist Empire. Although it was established as a federal State, The republics that formed it remained under the authority of the Communist Party of the USSR headed by a general secretary.

The death of the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in 1924 left Joseph Stalin at the head of the new one-party state. Appointed general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, he promoted a policy of industrialization and state centralization of the economy and put an end to all forms of left-wing dissent and opposition. This included the persecution of Leon Trotsky, an important revolutionary who had participated in Lenin's Bolshevik government and who defended a communist doctrine different from that of Stalin.

The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany shortly before the start of World War II, but was subsequently invaded by German troops and eventually He collaborated with the Allies, with whom he defeated Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan in 1945. The USSR was the country that suffered the greatest casualties during the conflict: around 25 million deaths among civilians (almost 18 million) and military personnel (almost 9 million).

The Cold War

The end of the Second World War left the USSR and the United States as the great world powers, after the collapse of a devastated Europe. So a fight for political hegemony and ideological domination of the world began between these two powers. Each defended its own economic model: Western capitalism (from the United States) versus communism (from the Soviet Union).

This conflict was very prolonged and very particular, since Neither of the two countries attacked each other directly, but they fought their battles through third countries through supporting or financing insurgencies, dictatorships, revolutions and opposing sides in civil wars throughout the Third World, especially in Asia and Latin America.

Furthermore, the USSR and the United States They competed in technological, cultural and weapons matters which promoted the development of technology of primary importance in the contemporary world, such as advances in computing, experimentation with nuclear technology and space travel (the USSR was the first country to take a live animal to outer space, the dog Laika, and on putting a cosmonaut into orbit, Yuri Gagarin).

See also: Capitalism and socialism

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The USSR began a period of economic crisis and political instability in the 1970s and 1980s, which an attempt was made to alleviate with a series of reforms promoted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: the perestroika and the glasnost. These initiatives promoted economic and political liberalization, but were not successful in saving the Soviet economy from crisis.

The USSR was unable to maintain his economy at the pace demanded by its investment in technology and the financing of allied governments such as Cuba. At the same time, new political freedoms stimulated protest movements and nationalist demands in the Soviet republics. In 1989 the communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell.

A governance crisis soon occurred in the USSR, which also lost portions of its territory. This situation led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new era in contemporary history, which in previous decades had been on the brink of a nuclear war.

References

• Dewdney, J.C. et al. (2023). Soviet Union. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Fitzpatrick, S. (2005). The Russian Revolution. 21st century.
• Powaski, R. E. (2000). The Cold War: United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. Criticism.
• Saborido, J. (2009). History of the Soviet Union. I emecé.