Portal:Soviet Union

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UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

Introduction

Coat of arms of the Soviet Union 1
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. It was the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing land borders with twelve countries. A successor state to the Russian Empire, the country was nominally organized as a federal union of fifteen national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was the world's third-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was a flagship communist state. Its capital as well as its largest city was Moscow. Other highly urbanized centers were Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, and Baku.

The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Provisional Government that formed earlier that year following the February Revolution that had dissolved the Russian Empire. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally socialist state. The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic, resulting in the Russian Civil War between the Bolsheviks and the anti-communist Whites. As the war progressed in the Bolsheviks' favor, the RSFSR began to incorporate land acquired from the war into various puppet states, which were merged into the Soviet Union in December 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The forced labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. During the late 1930s, Stalin conducted the Great Purge to remove actual and perceived opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact despite their ideological incongruence; nonetheless, in 1941, Nazi 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 in 1945, suffering an estimated 27 million casualties, which accounted for the majority of Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army, forming various satellite states, and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower.

Following World War II, ideological tensions with the United States eventually 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, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. Neither side ever 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 the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China. During the 1950s, the Soviet Union rapidly expanded its efforts in space exploration and took an early 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 (Venus). The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.

The 1970s saw a brief détente in the Soviet Union's relationship with the United States, but tensions emerged again following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. 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 entire Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to reform and preserve the country as a renewed federation, an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the three most populous and economically developed republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede from the Union. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the RSFSR, 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 USSR 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.

The Punch-up in Piestany was a bench-clearing brawl between Canada and the Soviet Union during the final game of the 1987 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships in Piešťany, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) on January 4, 1987. The incident resulted in the ejection of both teams, and while the Soviets had already been eliminated from medal contention, the disqualification cost Canada a medal – potentially the gold. The brawl is famous for officials having turned off the arena lights in a desperate attempt to end the 20-minute melee. Much of the blame was placed on Norwegian referee Hans Rønning, who had been selected for the game based on his perceived neutrality rather than experience.

Following the brawl, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) suspended the players involved for 18 months and the coaches for three years. The players' suspensions were later reduced to six months on appeal, allowing several players from both teams to return for the 1988 tournament in Moscow. Both nations won medals in 1988, with Canada taking the gold and the Soviets winning silver. (Full article...)
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360° Panoramic view of the Red Square in Moscow. The photograph was made early in the morning by a nearly empty square.
360° Panoramic view of the Red Square in Moscow. The photograph was made early in the morning by a nearly empty square.
Credit: A.Savin

Red Square (Russian: Красная площадь, Krásnaya plóshchad’) is a city square in Moscow. During the Soviet era, Red Square maintained its significance, becoming a focal point for the new state. Besides being the official address of the Soviet government, it was renowned as a showcase for military parades.

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Yakov Smirnoff
Yakov Smirnoff, commenting on his life under Soviet rule

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George Abramovich Koval (Russian: Жорж (Георгий) Абрамович Коваль, IPA: [ˈʐorʐ (ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj) ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ kɐˈvalʲ] , Zhorzh Abramovich Koval; December 25, 1913 – January 31, 2006) was an American engineer who acted as a Soviet intelligence officer for the Soviet atomic bomb project. Koval's infiltration of the Manhattan Project as a GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agent reduced the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons.

Koval was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Sioux City, Iowa. As an adult, he traveled with his parents to the Soviet Union to settle in the Jewish Autonomous Region near the Chinese border. Koval was recruited by the GRU, trained, and assigned the code name DELMAR. He returned to the United States in 1940 and was drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1943. Koval worked at atomic research laboratories and, according to the Russian government, relayed back to the Soviet Union information about the production processes and volumes of the polonium, plutonium, and uranium used in American atomic weaponry, and descriptions of the weapon production sites. In 1948, Koval left on a European vacation but never returned to the United States. In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval the Hero of the Russian Federation decoration for his service. (Full article...)

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The Grand Trianon at Versailles, site of the signing.
The Grand Trianon at Versailles, site of the signing.

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    Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration
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    Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2
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    RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01
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    Russian Imperial Family 1913
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    USS Yorktown collision
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    Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W)
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    Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration

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  • German instrument of surrender2 (2009-05-07)
    German instrument of surrender2 (2009-05-07)
  • Instrument of surrender Japan2 (2009-09-02)
    Instrument of surrender Japan2 (2009-09-02)
  • Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W) (2010-05-08)
    Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W) (2010-05-08)
  • USS Yorktown collision (2011-02-12)
    USS Yorktown collision (2011-02-12)
  • Maxim Gorky LOC Restored edit1 (2013-03-28)
    Maxim Gorky LOC Restored edit1 (2013-03-28)
  • Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration (2020-03-09)
    Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration (2020-03-09)
  • Alexei Leonov (2020-03-18)
    Alexei Leonov (2020-03-18)
  • Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration (2020-05-08)
    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)
    RUS-2016-Murmansk-Icebreaker Lenin 01 (2020-06-08)
  • Moscow Elektrozavodskaya metro station asv2018-09 (2022-02-26)
    Moscow Elektrozavodskaya metro station asv2018-09 (2022-02-26)
  • Russian Imperial Family 1913 (2022-07-17)
    Russian Imperial Family 1913 (2022-07-17)
  • Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending the Second World War (2022-09-02)
    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)
    2020-09-16 165855 Soviet submarine B-515 (2023-04-18)
  • Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2 (2023-07-25)
    Prokofieff (i.e. Prokofiev) LCCN2014708419 Crop 2 (2023-07-25)


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