Soviet Union (USSR): A Visual History

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed in December 1922 from the wreckage of the Russian Empire after the Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War. Under Stalin it industrialised at horrific human cost, absorbed the Baltic states and eastern Poland under the Nazi-Soviet Pact, then bore the brunt of defeating Nazi Germany at a cost of some 27 million dead. Its postwar empire in Eastern Europe, nuclear arsenal and space programme made it one of two superpowers. Economic stagnation, the war in Afghanistan and Gorbachev's reforms unravelled it; on 26 December 1991 the USSR ceased to exist and fifteen independent states took its place.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Soviet Union (USSR). The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated population of the USSR

Population figures from Soviet censuses and estimates. The dip after 1941 reflects wartime deaths and the annexation of new territory in 1939-1945 partly offsets it.

Timeline of the Soviet Union (USSR)

1. 1917
   October RevolutionBolsheviks seize power in Petrograd.
2. 1922
   USSR foundedTreaty on the Creation of the USSR signed 30 December.
3. 1924
   Lenin diesStalin begins his rise.
4. 1929
   Collectivisation beginsFirst Five Year Plan under way.
5. 1932-1933
   FamineMillions die, especially in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
6. 1936-1938
   Great TerrorShow trials and mass executions.
7. 1939
   Nazi-Soviet PactPoland partitioned; Baltics annexed 1940.
8. 1941
   BarbarossaGerman invasion; the Great Patriotic War.
9. 1943
   StalingradGerman Sixth Army destroyed.
10. 1945
    Berlin takenVictory in Europe; Soviet zone of occupation.
11. 1949
    First atomic testThe nuclear arms race begins.
12. 1953
    Stalin diesKhrushchev emerges as leader.
13. 1957
    SputnikFirst artificial satellite.
14. 1962
    Cuban Missile CrisisThe closest the Cold War came to nuclear war.
15. 1979
    Afghanistan invadedA nine year war.
16. 1986
    ChernobylNuclear disaster in Ukraine.
17. 1989
    Eastern bloc collapsesBerlin Wall falls.
18. 1991
    DissolutionAugust coup fails; USSR ends 26 December.

Revolution, civil war and Lenin

Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in October (November, new style) 1917 with the slogan 'Peace, Land and Bread'. They pulled Russia out of World War I at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, moved the capital to Moscow and fought a savage civil war against 'White' armies, national independence movements and foreign interventions until 1922. The Cheka secret police, forerunner of the KGB, dates from these years.

The USSR was formally created on 30 December 1922 as a federation of republics, in theory equal, in practice ruled from Moscow by the Communist Party. Lenin, weakened by strokes, died in January 1924, warning in his last testament against Stalin's rudeness and ambition. The warning was suppressed.

Stalin: terror and industrialisation

Stalin outmanoeuvred Trotsky and every other rival by 1929 and launched the first Five Year Plan. Forced collectivisation of agriculture caused a famine in 1932-1933 that killed millions, especially in Ukraine, where it is known as the Holodomor. At the same time steel plants, dams and whole cities rose from nothing, and the Soviet Union became an industrial power in a decade.

The Great Terror of 1936-1938 saw show trials of old Bolsheviks, the execution of most of the Red Army's senior officers, and around 700,000 people shot; millions more passed through the Gulag labour camps. In August 1939 Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and secretly divided Eastern Europe with him.

The Great Patriotic War and superpower status

Hitler's invasion in June 1941 caught Stalin unprepared and cost the Red Army millions of prisoners in months. The Wehrmacht was stopped outside Moscow that winter, destroyed at Stalingrad in 1942-1943 and rolled back to Berlin by 1945. Soviet deaths, military and civilian, are estimated at 27 million; the war shaped Soviet identity for the rest of its existence.

The Red Army's presence turned Eastern Europe into a bloc of satellite states. The USSR tested an atomic bomb in 1949, launched Sputnik in 1957 and put Yuri Gagarin in orbit in 1961. Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in 1956 and took the world to the brink in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; Brezhnev crushed the Prague Spring in 1968 and presided over two decades of stability that hardened into stagnation.

Reform and collapse

Mikhail Gorbachev, in office from 1985, tried to save the system with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Openness exposed the Chernobyl disaster and the past; restructuring wrecked what was left of the planned economy. He withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and refused to send tanks when Poland, Hungary, East Germany and the rest broke free that autumn. The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989.

Nationalist movements in the Baltics, the Caucasus and Ukraine demanded independence. A hard-line coup in August 1991 failed within three days, made Boris Yeltsin the hero of the hour, and destroyed the Communist Party's authority. On 8 December the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared the USSR dissolved; Gorbachev resigned on 25 December, and the red flag came down over the Kremlin.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Russian Empire (1721 to 1917)
• Nazi Germany (1933 to 1945)
• United States (1776 to present)
• Qing dynasty (1636 to 1912)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)

Wars of the same era and region

• Russian Civil War (1917 to 1922)
• World War II (1939 to 1945)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Soviet-Afghan War (1979 to 1989)
• Korean War (1950 to 1953)
• Vietnam War (1955 to 1975)
• Chinese Civil War (1927 to 1949)

10 surprising things about the Soviet Union (USSR)

1. The USSR spanned eleven time zones, so a person in Vladivostok was having lunch while a Kaliningrad worker was still asleep.
2. Ukraine and Belarus each had their own seat at the United Nations from 1945, giving the Soviet Union three votes in the General Assembly.
3. Stalin's real name was Ioseb Jughashvili; 'Stalin' means roughly 'man of steel' and was a revolutionary alias, like Lenin's.
4. The Soviet Union built the world's largest hotel (the Rossiya) and largest swimming pool, on the site of a demolished cathedral that has since been rebuilt.
5. Sputnik's beeps could be picked up on ordinary radios, which is why it caused such panic in the United States.
6. Laika the dog, the first animal in orbit in 1957, was never intended to survive; the Soviets admitted only decades later that she died within hours from overheating.
7. The Soviet constitution of 1936 guaranteed freedom of speech, press and assembly, at the very moment the Great Terror was at its height.
8. Soviet citizens needed an internal passport and permission to move between cities, and collective farmers were not issued passports at all until the 1970s.
9. The 1991 coup plotters announced Gorbachev was 'ill' while a ballet, Swan Lake, was broadcast on loop on state television.
10. The Soviet Union's dissolution was so sudden that its athletes competed as the 'Unified Team' at the 1992 Olympics under the Olympic flag.

Sources

• Soviet Union Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Soviet Union Wikipedia
• Dissolution of the Soviet Union Wikipedia
• The Collapse of the Soviet Union US Department of State, Office of the Historian
• Stephen Kotkin, Stalin (2014, 2017) Allen Lane
• Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (1982, 4th ed. 2017) Oxford University Press

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