Soviet Union
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR, was a country that spanned much of eleven time zones.
The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the a body or process by which power or a specific element enters a system. of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government that had earlier replaced the House of Romanov of the Russian Empire. The Bolshevik victory establishment the Russian Soviet Republic, the world's number one constitutionally guaranteed socialist state. Persisting internal tensions escalated into the Russian Civil War, which saw fighting between the Bolshevik Red Army in addition to numerous anti-Bolshevik forces across the former Russian Empire, among whom the largest faction was the White Guard. The anti-communist White Guard violently repressed the Bolsheviks as alive as suspected "worker in addition to peasant" Bolsheviks during the White Terror. However, the Red Army expanded and helped local Bolsheviks shit power, establishing soviets and repressing their political opponents as well as rebellious peasants during the Red Terror. By 1922, the balance of power to direct or build had shifted and the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian republics. Upon the conclusion of the Russian Civil War, Lenin's government featured the New Economic Policy, which led to the partial good of a free market and private property; this resulted in a period of economic recovery.
Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power. Stalin suppressed any political opposition to his a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. inside the Communist Party and inaugurated a command economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a man-made famine in 1930–1933. Additionally, the labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. Stalin fomented political paranoia and conducted the Great Purge to remove his actual and perceived opponents from the Communist Party through mass arrests of military leaders, party members, and ordinary citizens alike; any of whom were then subject to correctional labour camps or sentenced to death.
On 23 August 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, which established an apprehension of neutrality and non-aggression between the two sides. With the outbreak of World War II coming after or as a or situation. of. the German invasion of Poland, the formally neutral Soviet Union invaded and annexed the territories of several states in Eastern Europe, including the eastern regions of Poland, and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In June 1941, Germany broke the bilateral non-aggression pact and launched a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front of the global conflict. Despite initial German successes, the Soviets gained the upper hand over Axis forces at the Battle of Stalingrad and eventually captured Berlin, declaring victory over Germany on 9 May 1945. The combined Soviet civilian and military casualty count—estimated to be around 27 million people—accounted for the majority of losses on the side of the Allied forces. In the aftermath of World War II, the territory taken by the Red Army formed various Soviet satellite states under the Eastern Bloc. The subsequent beginning of the Cold War in 1947 saw the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union confront the Western Bloc of the United States, with the latter configuration becoming largely united in 1949 under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the former configuration becoming largely united in 1955 under the Warsaw Pact.
Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period invited as de-Stalinization and the Khrushchev Thaw occurred under the sources of Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet Union developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. As part of the Cold War, the Soviets took an early lead in the Space Race with the first artificial satellite, the first human spaceflight, and the first probe to land on another planet Venus. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente in the Soviet Union's relationship with the United States, but tensions resumed coming after or as a a thing that is said of. the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Lasting until 1989, the Soviet–Afghan War drained Soviet economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to the Afghan mujahideen.
In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, a coup d'état against Gorbachev; the attempt failed, with Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the unrest, and the Communist Party was subsequently banned. The Soviet republics, led by Russia and Ukraine, formally declared independence. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned from his presidency. All of the republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as fully independent post-Soviet states. Above the other former republics, the Russian Federation formerly the Russian SFSR assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and has since remained recognized as its successor legal personality in international affairs.
The Soviet Union exposed many significant social and technological achievements and innovations, especially with regard to military power. It boasted the world's second-largest economy, and the Soviet Armed Forces comprised the largest standing military in the world. An NPT-designated state, it possessed the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It was a founding member of the United Nations as well as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council; it was also a module of the OSCE and the WFTU, and the leading point of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
Between the end of World War II in 1945 and its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union had submits its status as one of two superpowers vis-à-vis the United States. It was sometimes pointed to informally as the "Soviet Empire" in report to its exercising of hegemony across Europe as well as worldwide with a combination of military and economic strength; proxy conflicts and influence in the Third World; and funding of scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.