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 and perestroika . In 1989, various countries of the Warsaw Pact 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.
Computer model of a Zond circumlunar spacecraft
Zond 5 (Russian : Зонд 5 , lit. 'Probe 5') was a spacecraft of the Soviet Zond program . In September 1968 it became the first spaceship to travel to and circle the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory , the first Moon mission to include animals, and the first to return safely to Earth. Zond 5 carried the first terrestrial organisms to the vicinity of the Moon, including two Russian tortoises , fruit fly eggs, and plants. The tortoises underwent biological changes during the flight, but it was concluded that the changes were primarily due to starvation and that they were little affected by space travel.
The Zond spacecraft was a version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed lunar-flyby spacecraft. It was launched by a Proton-K carrier rocket with a Block D upper-stage to conduct scientific studies during its lunar flyby . (Full article... )
... that the proposals for a new Crimean flag after the collapse of the Soviet Union included a white flag with seven rainbow colors at the top and a blue-white-red tricolor design, which was officially adopted in 1999?
“
In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.
”
Pavel Vladimirovich Bure (Russian : Па́вел Влади́мирович Буре́ , IPA: [ˈpavʲɪl bʊˈrɛ] ; born 31 March 1971) is a Russian former professional ice hockey player who played the right wing position. Nicknamed "the Russian Rocket " for his speed, Bure played for 12 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Vancouver Canucks , Florida Panthers and New York Rangers between 1991 and 2003. Trained in the Soviet Union, he played three seasons with the Central Red Army team before his NHL career.
Selected 113th overall in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft by Vancouver, he began his NHL career in the 1991–92 season , and won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's best rookie before leading the NHL in goal-scoring in 1993–94 and helping the Canucks to the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals . After seven seasons the Canucks traded Bure to the Panthers, where he won back-to-back Rocket Richard Trophies as the league's leading goal-scorer. Bure struggled with knee injuries throughout his career, resulting in his retirement in 2005 as a member of the Rangers, although he had not played since 2003. He averaged better than a point per game in his NHL career (779 points with 437 goals in 702 NHL games) and is fourth all-time in goals per game. After six years of eligibility, Bure was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in June 2012. In 2017, an NHL panel named Bure one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in history. (Full article... )
The following are images from various Soviet Union-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1 Bolshevik (1920) by
Boris Kustodiev (from
October Revolution )
Image 3 Internally displaced Azerbaijanis from
Nagorno-Karabakh , 1993 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 5 Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 6 The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917 (from
October Revolution )
Image 7 The elections to the
Constituent Assembly took place in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won 24% of the vote. (from
October Revolution )
Image 8 Meeting before the Russian wire entanglements (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 9 The 2nd Moscow Women Death Battalion protecting the Winter Palace as the last guards of the stronghold (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 10 Forward gun of
Aurora that fired the signal shot (from
October Revolution )
Image 11 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 12 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 13 Lenin ,
Trotsky and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution (from
October Revolution )
Image 14 The
Pan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border. (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 15 Russian troops in trenches awaiting a German attack (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 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 18 "Pogrom in the Winter Palace" by
Ivan Vladimirov (from
October Revolution )
Image 19 Lenin ,
Trotsky , and
Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the
October Revolution (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 20 Murder of the Romanov family,
Le Petit Journal (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 21 A revolutionary meeting of Russian soldiers in March 1917 in Dalkarby of
Jomala ,
Åland (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 22 A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters. (from
October Revolution )
Image 24 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 26 Petrograd
Milrevcom proclamation about the deposing of the
Russian Provisional Government (from
October Revolution )
Image 27 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 28 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 30 Russian troops meeting German troops in No Man's Land (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 32 Revolutionaries protesting in February 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 33 Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev (left) with US President
John F. Kennedy in Vienna, 3 June 1961 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 34 The
Battle of Stalingrad , considered by many historians as a decisive turning point of World War II (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 35 Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with US President
Ronald Reagan (
left ), 1985 (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 36 Soldiers marching in
Petrograd , March 1917 (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 37 Russian Civil War in the European part of Russia (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 39 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 40 Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War (from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 41 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 42 Revolutionaries attacking the tsarist police in the early days of the February Revolution (from
Russian Revolution )
Image 43 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 44 European theatre of the
Russian Civil War in 1918 (from
October Revolution )
Image 45 Anniversary of October Revolution in
Riga , Soviet Union in 1988 (from
October Revolution )
Image 46 The
Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million people.
(from
History of the Soviet Union )
Image 47 Provisional Government 's volunteer soldiers secure Petrograd's
Palace Square with the
Austin Armoured Car , summer 1917. (from
Russian Revolution )
Selected anniversaries for February
Soviet Army Day - 23 February - formation of the Red Army in February 1918. Unlike others, it was not an official holiday.
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2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515
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German instrument of surrender2 (2009-05-07)
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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)
RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01 (2020-06-08)
Moscow Elektrozavodskaya metro station asv2018-09 (2022-02-26)
Russian Imperial Family 1913 (2022-07-17)
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)
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