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| Geography, climate and environment | |
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Main article: Geography of the Soviet Union
With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest state. Covering a sixth of the Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones, and almost 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.
The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), two-thirds of it a coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey from 1945 to 1991.
The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. Its highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan, at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, lay mainly within the Soviet Union. The world's largest freshwater and deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.
Tags:Union,United States,North America,European,Asia,Pacific Ocean,Tundra,Taiga,Steppes,Arctic Ocean,Bering Strait,Afghanistan,China,Czechoslovakia,Finland,Hungary,Iran,Mongolia,North Korea,Norway,Poland,Romania,Turkey,Irtysh,Ismail Samani Peak,Tajikistan,Caspian Sea,Lake Baikal, | |
| History | |
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Main article: History of the Soviet Union
The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled the Russian Empire until his abdication in March 1917, due in part to the strain of fighting in World War I. A short-lived Russian provisional government took power, to be overthrown in the 1917 October Revolution (N.S. November 1917) by revolutionaries led by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
The Soviet Union was officially established in December 1922 with the union of the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics, each ruled by local Bolshevik parties. Despite the foundation of the Soviet state as a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities, the term "Soviet Russia" – strictly applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republic – was often incorrectly applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers and politicians.
Tags:Russian,Government,History,List,Revolution,Soviet Republics,Russian Empire,Vladimir Lenin,History Of The Soviet Union,Tsar,Nicholas Ii,World War I,Russian Provisional Government,1917 October Revolution,Bolshevik,Ukrainian,Byelorussian,Transcaucasian,October Revolution, | |
| Revolution and foundation | |
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Main articles: History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927), Russian Revolution (1917), February Revolution, Russian Provisional Government, October Revolution, and Russian Civil War
Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar resisted attempts to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd in 1920.
A spontaneous popular uprising in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I.
At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the October Revolution, they seized power. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
A long and bloody Russian Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds victorious. It included foreign intervention, the execution of Nicholas II and his family, and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million.[8] In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania.
Tags:Constitution,1917–1927,Civil War,Economy,Family,History Of Soviet Russia And The Soviet Union (1917–1927),Russian Revolution (1917),February Revolution,Russian Civil War,Decembrist Revolt,Serfdom,State Duma,Russian Revolution Of 1905,Absolute,Constitutional Monarchy,Social Unrest,Saint Petersburg, | |
| Unification of republics | |
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On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR[9] and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[10] These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations,[11] Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Aleksandr Chervyakov,[12] on 30 December 1922.
On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.
An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10-to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises.[13] The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931.[14]
Tags:Byelorussian Ssr,Congress,Congress Of Soviets,Five-year Plan, | |
| Stalin era | |
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Main article: History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)
Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. After Yezhov was executed he was edited out of this image.
From its beginning, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[15] After the economic policy of War Communism during the Russian Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).
Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary to ensure that "capitalist exploitation" would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.
On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and out-maneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, by the end of the 1920s, established totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.
In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. While encompassing the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it also aimed to build socialism in one country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, collective farms were established all over the country.
Famines ensued, causing millions of deaths; surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour.[16] Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the execution or detainment of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. According to declassified Soviet archives, in 1937 and 1938, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day.[17] The excess deaths during the 1930s as a whole were in the range of 10–11 million.[18] Yet despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II.
Tags:World War Ii,Moscow,Communist Party,General Secretary,Central Committee,Leaders,1927–1953,Agriculture,New Economic Policy,Culture,Great Purge,Joseph Stalin,Industrialization, | |
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