File:Znak kachestva.svg UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS File:Znak kachestva.svg
IntroductionThe Soviet Union, officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transnational union of Marxist–Leninist socialist states that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.
It was established in 1922 as a union of four socialist republics created after the 1917 October Revolution, namely the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. The years that followed saw the addition of the Uzbek and Tajik SSRs; the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved in 1936 in favor of the elevated SSRs of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. From 1956 to 1991, the union comprised 15 member republics, two of which had their own member seats at the United Nations. The USSR represented a groundbreaking political alternative for the working class as the first stable socialist state in history. This was remarkable especially in a time period where workers in the Western world were still struggling for basic union rights; the 1924 Soviet Constitution and the 1936 Soviet Constitution represented some of the most progressive political advancements in history. The Soviet Union developed under extreme pressure from capitalist states and global imperialism; during the Russian Civil War, starting from 1918, it suffered successive invasions by Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Poland, and several other minor European powers. Some of these interventions temporarily succeeded in overthrowing local soviets and installing anti-communist puppet regimes, although they were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the founding of the Soviet Union. Barely two decades later, during World War II, the Nazi invasion represented the second imperialist war on the USSR, this time in the name of fascism. Although the fascists inflicted catastrophic damage on the western USSR and its population, the Red Army ultimately succeeded in repelling the Nazi forces and went on to play an integral role in the defeat of German Nazism in 1945. Despite these difficulties, the Soviet Union achieved some of the most impressive economic developments in modern history. Socialism transformed a country of illiterate and starving peasants into an industrial superpower with one of the fastest growing economies on Earth. The Soviet people were one of the world's best-educated and healthiest populations, responsible for some of history's most impressive industrial and scientific achievements to date. And it provided a very influential model for other later socialist projects in places such as China, Cuba and Vietnam. Starting from 1988, many SSRs seceded from the USSR before its illegal overthrow in 1991. Its past territory is now occupied by the successor states of Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Pridnestrovie, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Artsakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. (Full article...)File:Symbol support vote.svg Recognized article - File:Cscr-featured.pngEntries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
The Katyn massacre (not to be confused with the Khatyn massacre) refers to the mass executions of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians in Eastern Europe which, while in reality were perpetrated by Nazi Germany sometime between 1941 and 1943, have been misattributed to the Soviet Union by anti-communist governments and historians, who claim that the massacres were carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940. The massacres are collectively named after the Katyn forest near Smolensk as the graves were first discovered there. However, many of the victims of the so-called "Katyn" massacre were actually murdered and buried in the Kharkiv and Tver Oblasts. On 13 April 1943, German authorities announced that they had found thousands of bodies of Polish POWs near Katyn, which at the time was under German occupation. In an official report in the summer/autumn of 1943, Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn, the Germans claimed the Soviets had shot the Poles. The Polish government-in-exile in London accepted the German account and held the Soviets to be responsible. The Soviet government responded with their own report in 1944 by the Burdenko Commission which blamed the Germans. (Full article...)Lua error in Module:Random_portal_component at line 82: attempt to call field 'number' (a nil value). Did you know... -Lua error in Module:Random_portal_component at line 82: attempt to call field 'number' (a nil value). WikiProjectsSelected biography -Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and chief of the NKVD from 1938 to 1945. During the 1950s, he wanted to allow some private industry, weaken the kolkhoz system, and restore diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. Molotov suspected that Beria was responsible for Stalin's death. Beria's ally, Viktor Abakumov, was arrested in 1951 and removed from his position as leader of the MVD. Soon after, many of Beria's supporters were purged from the Georgian Central Committee for corruption. (Full article...)General imagesThe following are images from various Soviet Union-related articles on Wikipedia.
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