Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities. uncorrected version. In turn the prosecutors were tried and executed. In physics, the theory of relativity was dismissed as "bourgeois idealism". The Soviet Union,[e] officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics[f] (USSR),[g] was a federal socialist state in Northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. The Spanish government let the USSR have the government treasury. It was the third-highest in the Eastern Bloc, behind Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and the 25th in the world of 130 countries. Civilians were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities conquered by the Nazis. [243] Leftists have largely varying views on the USSR. [j] Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the detainment or execution of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. ", Scott and Scott, The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, Westview Press, 1979, p.13, harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFWilson1983 (, Rebecca Balmas Neary, "Mothering Socialist Society: The Wife-Activists' Movement and the Soviet Culture of Daily Life, 1934–1941,". [104] All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. [249], In some post Soviet republics, there is a more negative view of the USSR, although there is no unanimity on the matter. 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer were reported after the incident, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). [167], Excess deaths throughout World War I and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million,[184] some 10 million in the 1930s,[39] and more than 26 million in 1941–5. Some historians, however, interpret the lack of preparedness of the Soviet Union to defend itself as a flaw in Stalin's economic planning. Throughout the 1930s, industrialization was combined with a rapid expansion of technical and engineering education as well as increasing emphasis on munitions. In the 1990s, when the US Skylab was shut down due to lack of funds, it was the only orbital station in operation. [106][107], In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement, the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain. For other uses, see, Countries of Eastern and Central Europe during their, War and Stalinist industrial-military development. One study, relying on indirect evidence from the 1959 population census, found that while in terms of the aggregate human losses the major Slavic groups suffered most, the largest losses relative to population size were incurred by minority nationalities mainly from European Russia, among groups from which men were mustered to the front in "nationality battalions" and appear to have suffered disproportionately.[55]. [149] At its peak in 1988, it was the largest producer and second-largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.[169]. The three power kept in regular contact, with Stalin trying to maintain a veil of secrecy over internal affairs. [212][neutrality is disputed], Members of various ethnicities participated in legislative bodies. With wages artificially depressed, the state could afford to employ far more workers than would be financially viable in a market economy. These elections are generally regarded as rigged, and the Western powers recognized them as show elections. ", Nikos Marantzidis, "The Greek Civil War (1944–1949) and the International Communist System. Bailes, Kendall E. "The American Connection: Ideology and the Transfer of American Technology to the Soviet Union, 1917–1941. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status. Due to this, anarchists generally hold a large animosity towards the USSR. In large part due to the Holodomor, ethnic Ukrainians have a negative view of it. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain between the West and Soviet-controlled regions came down.[55][56][57][58]. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the United Nations becomes precarious. The Ukrainian SSR gained Transcarpathia (as Zakarpattia Oblast) from Czechoslovakia, and Ukrainian populated Northern Bukovina (as Chernivtsi Oblast) from Romania. It resulted in the defeat of the AUW, and they were replaced by the All-Russian Union of Soviet Writers, which strictly adopted the literary style of socialist realism. The USSR also refused to pay tsarist-era debts to foreign debtors. The socio-economic nature of communist states such as the USSR, especially under Stalin, has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism, state socialism, or a totally unique mode of production. [47][48] During the war, the country together with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four Allied powers,[49] and later became the Four Policemen that formed the basis of the United Nations Security Council. [105], In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Marxist-Leninist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-Marxist political parties, labor unions or other organizations on the left. Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History, by Dilip Hiro. [35], In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new constitution that was praised by supporters around the world as the most democratic constitution imaginable, though there was some skepticism. [4], During the second five-year plan (1933–37), on the basis of the huge investment during the first plan, the industry expanded extremely rapidly and nearly reached the plan's targets. [54], Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Gorbachev resigned as general secretary in late August, and soon afterwards, the party's activities were indefinitely suspended—effectively ending its rule. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice". The Soviet Union national ice hockey team won nearly every world championship and Olympic tournament between 1954 and 1991 and never failed to medal in any International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) tournament in which they competed. [26] The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931. After the war, the Soviet Union occupied and dominated Eastern Europe, in line with their particular Marxist ideology. Next Timeline 1917 Bolshevik Revolution : Czar Nicholas abdicates; Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , take control; Russian Soviet Socialist Republic established; capital moves to Moscow [159] Compared to countries with similar per-capita GDP in 1928, the Soviet Union experienced significant growth. [253], The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's existence. In real terms, the workers' standards of living tended to drop, rather than rise during industrialization. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of 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. Bukharin's success was short-lived; he was arrested in 1937, given a show trial and executed. By 1922, the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. Economist Holland Hunter, in addition, argues in his Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan, that an array "of alternative paths were available, evolving out of the situation existing at the end of the 1920s... that could have been as good as those achieved by, say, 1936 yet with far less turbulence, waste, destruction and sacrifice.". Gradually, other modules were added to it, including American ones. David Stuckler, Lawrence King, and Martin McKee. Given its late start, the USSR needed to import a substantial number of the expensive technologies necessary for heavy industrialization. [116], However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party. Workers who exceeded their quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work, although many such workers were in fact "arranged" to succeed by receiving extreme help in their work, and then their achievements were used for propaganda. It will last until 1991. The Russian Federation is seen as the legal continuator state and is for most purposes the heir to the Soviet Union. [111] Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country[112] (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). [141] In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Peter Whitewood examines the first purge, directed at the Army, and comes up with a third interpretation that: Stalin and other top leaders, using Marxist notions that they were always surrounded by enemies, always worried about the vulnerability and loyalty of the Red Army. [17] Such misapplications of the linguistic equivalents to the term Russia and its derivatives were frequent in other languages as well. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (SSRs) were also admitted into the union which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation. The final blow was struck on 1 December when Ukraine, the second-most powerful republic, voted overwhelmingly for independence. 81–104 He governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, serving as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953 and as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952. [30] The pretext was the 1934 assassination of Sergey Kirov (which many suspect Stalin of having planned, although there is no evidence for this). The word sovietnik means "councillor". The United States was the last major polity to recognise the USSR in 1933. Расследование гибели СССР. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces. Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first People's Commissar for Education of Soviet Russia. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to Germany from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point in the war. Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader. Although it had a tough position at the time, due to Russia's position as a "single continuation of the USSR" that became widely accepted in the West as well as a constant pressure from the Western countries, allowed Russia to dispose state property of USSR abroad and conceal information about it. [74] Informal networks of friends and relatives known as svoi ("one's own") emerged that functioned as self-help societies, and often became crucial to determining one's social success as the membership of the right svoi could improve the odds of one's children attending a prestigious university or allow one to obtain basic goods in short supply such as toilet paper. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Derek W. Spring, "The Soviet decision for war against Finland, 30 November 1939. Of the seventy to eighty thousand foreigners who came to the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s for work, a large proportion was American. [69] After 1945, this loosening of social control was never completely undone as instead the state sought to co-opt the certain elements of the population, allowing certain rules to be contravened provided that the populace remained overall loyal. The remaining 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union. 1925–1936  Kazak2 New branches for nuclear weapons, space missiles and radio electronics were added during and after the war. Other major urban centers were Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR) and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). Life expectancy started to decline in the 1970s, possibly because of alcohol abuse. The life of the residents in the Soviet Union during the 1930s was based on the development and effects of such processes as collectivization and industrialization, the main accents were made on the equality of workers and their hard labor which often could be discussed even as heroic. Although the 1946 drought was severe, government mismanagement of its grain reserves largely accounted for the population losses. However, just about anyone opposing collectivization was deemed a "kulak". However, the natural progress of collectivization was slow, and the November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee decided to accelerate collectivization through force. [citation needed] However, the long-term effects of the accident are unknown. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on the matter. During Stalin's rule, the Soviet culture was characterized by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's works. The education system was highly centralized and universally accessible to all citizens, with affirmative action for applicants from nations associated with cultural backwardness. [80] Borkenau's techniques were a minute analysis of official Soviet statements and the relative placement of various officials at the Kremlin on festive occasions to determine which Soviet official enjoyed Stalin's favour and which official did not. [28] The stated purpose was to prevent the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. Karelia was split off from Russia as a Union Republic in March 1940 and was reabsorbed in 1956. At the start, this decline grew very rapidly but gradually slowed down between 1970 and 1975. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union. A new threat in March 1940 led Finland to ask an armistice. [137], Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and communist hardliners. In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Empire of Japan in 1938 and 1939. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties, while other groups did not. 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