(USSR, Soviet Union), a state that existed in 1922-91 in most of the territory of the former Russian Empire.

• Byelorussian SSR (BSSR),
• Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR),
• Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (ZSFSR), which included the Azerbaijan SSR, the Armenian SSR, the Georgian SSR ( since 1936 were part of the USSR as independent union republics),
• Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian SSR).

Subsequently formed:

• Uzbek SSR, Turkmen SSR ( 1925 ),
• Tajik SSR ( 1929 ),
• Kazakh SSR ( 1936 ),
• Kirghiz SSR ( 1936 ),
• Moldavian SSR ( 1940 ),
• Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Estonian SSR ( 1940 ),
• Karelo-Finnish SSR ( 1940; since 1956 Karelian ASSR within the RSFSR).

From the beginning of the 1920s, and especially after the death of V. I. Lenin (see Lenin Vladimir Ilyich), a sharp political struggle for power unfolded in the country's leadership. The authoritarian methods of leadership used by I. V. Stalin to establish the regime of one-man power were established.

Since the mid 20s. the winding up of the New Economic Policy (NEP) began, and then the implementation of forced industrialization and forced collectivization. The Communist Party completely subjugated state structures. A strictly centralized and militarized social system was created in the country, the purpose of which was the rapid modernization of the country and the support of the revolutionary movement in other countries. Mass repressions, especially after 1934, affected all sectors of society; forced labor in the Gulag system assumed unprecedented proportions. By the end of the 30s. a developed industry was created in the country, focused primarily on the needs of defense.

At the end of the 30s. there were sharp changes in the country's foreign policy, a departure from the course of collective security. The Soviet-German treaties of 1939 were concluded, according to which Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were later included in the USSR, and in 1940 the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina.

Prerequisites for the formation of the USSR

Before the young state, torn apart by the consequences of the civil war, the problem of creating a unified administrative-territorial system became acute. At that time, the share of the RSFSR accounted for 92% of the country's area, the population of which later amounted to 70% of the newly formed USSR. The remaining 8% were divided between the republics of the Soviets: Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation, which united Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia in 1922. Also in the east of the country, the Far Eastern Republic was created, which was controlled from Chita. Central Asia at that time consisted of two people's republics - Khorezm and Bukhara.

In order to strengthen the centralization of management and the concentration of resources on the fronts of the civil war, the RSFSR, Belarus and Ukraine united in an alliance in June 1919. This made it possible to unite the armed forces, with the introduction of a centralized command (the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR and the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army). Representatives were delegated from each republic to the composition of state authorities. The agreement also provided for the reassignment of some republican branches of industry, transport and finance to the corresponding people's commissariats of the RSFSR. This state new formation went down in history under the name "contractual federation". Its peculiarity was that the Russian governing bodies got the opportunity to function as the only representatives of the supreme power of the state. At the same time, the communist parties of the republics became part of the RCP (b) only as regional party organizations.
The emergence and growth of confrontation.
All this soon led to disagreements between the republics and the control center in Moscow. After all, having delegated their main powers, the republics lost the opportunity to make decisions independently. At the same time, the independence of the republics in the sphere of governance was officially declared.
Uncertainty in determining the boundaries of the powers of the center and the republics gave rise to conflicts and confusion. Sometimes state authorities looked ridiculous, trying to bring to a common denominator the people, about whose traditions and culture they knew nothing. So, for example, the need for the existence of a subject for the study of the Koran in the schools of Turkestan gave rise in October 1922 to a sharp confrontation between the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the People's Commissariat for Nationalities.
Creation of a commission on relations between the RSFSR and the independent republics.
The decisions of the central authorities in the sphere of the economy did not find proper understanding among the republican authorities and often led to sabotage. In August 1922, in order to radically reverse the current situation, the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) considered the issue "On the relationship between the RSFSR and the independent republics", creating a commission, which included republican representatives. VV Kuibyshev was appointed chairman of the commission.
The commission instructed I. V. Stalin to develop a project for the "autonomization" of the republics. In the presented decision, it was proposed to include Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia into the RSFSR, with the rights of republican autonomy. The draft was sent by the Republican Party Central Committee for consideration. However, this was done only in order to obtain a formal approval of the decision. Given the significant infringement of the rights of the republics provided for by this decision, JV Stalin insisted on not applying the usual practice of publishing the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) if it was adopted. But he demanded to oblige the republican Central Committees of the parties to strictly implement it.
Creation by V.I. Lenin of the concept of the state on the basis of the Federation.
Ignoring the independence and self-government of the subjects of the country, with the simultaneous tightening of the role of the central authorities, were perceived by Lenin as a violation of the principle of proletarian internationalism. In September 1922, he proposed the idea of ​​creating a state on the principles of federation. Initially, such a name was proposed - the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia, later it was changed to the USSR. Joining the union was supposed to be a conscious choice of each sovereign republic, based on the principle of equality and independence, under the general authorities of the federation. V. I. Lenin believed that a multinational state must be built based on the principles of good neighborliness, parity, openness, respect and mutual assistance.

"Georgian conflict". Strengthening separatism.
At the same time, in some republics, there is a tilt towards the isolation of autonomies, and separatist sentiments are intensifying. For example, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia flatly refused to remain a part of the Transcaucasian Federation, demanding that the republic be admitted to the union as an independent entity. Furious polemics on this issue between representatives of the Central Committee of the Party of Georgia and the chairman of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee G.K. Ordzhonikidze ended in mutual insults and even assault on the part of Ordzhonikidze. The result of the policy of strict centralization on the part of the central authorities was the voluntary resignation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia in full force.
To investigate this conflict in Moscow, a commission was created, whose chairman was F. E. Dzerzhinsky. The commission took the side of G. K. Ordzhonikidze and subjected the Central Committee of Georgia to severe criticism. This fact outraged V. I. Lenin. He repeatedly tried to condemn the perpetrators of the clash in order to exclude the possibility of infringing on the independence of the republics. However, the progressing illness and civil strife in the Central Committee of the country's party did not allow him to complete the job.

Year of formation of the USSR

Officially date of formation of the USSR This is December 30, 1922. On this day, at the first Congress of Soviets, the Declaration on the Creation of the USSR and the Union Treaty were signed. The Union included the RSFSR, the Ukrainian and Belarusian socialist republics, as well as the Transcaucasian Federation. The Declaration formulated the reasons and determined the principles for the unification of the republics. The treaty delimited the functions of the republican and central authorities. The state bodies of the Union were entrusted with foreign policy and trade, means of communication, communications, as well as issues of organizing and controlling finance and defense.
Everything else belonged to the sphere of government of the republics.
The All-Union Congress of Soviets was proclaimed the supreme body of the state. In the period between congresses, the leading role was assigned to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, organized on the principle of bicameralism - the Union Council and the Council of Nationalities. M. I. Kalinin was elected chairman of the CEC, co-chairs - G. I. Petrovsky, N. N. Narimanov, A. G. Chervyakov. The government of the Union (Council of People's Commissars of the USSR) was headed by V. I. Lenin.

Financial and economic development
The unification of the republics into the Union made it possible to accumulate and direct all resources to eliminate the consequences of the civil war. This contributed to the development of the economy, cultural relations and made it possible to begin to get rid of distortions in the development of individual republics. A characteristic feature of the formation of a nationally oriented state was the efforts of the government in matters of the harmonious development of the republics. It was for this purpose that certain industries were moved from the territory of the RSFSR to the republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia, providing them with highly qualified labor resources. Financing was carried out to provide the regions with communications, electricity, water resources for irrigation in agriculture. The budgets of the other republics received subsidies from the state.
Social and cultural significance
The principle of building a multinational state based on uniform standards had a positive impact on the development in the republics of such spheres of life as culture, education and healthcare. In the 1920s and 1930s, schools were built everywhere in the republics, theaters opened, mass media and literature developed. For some peoples, scientists have developed a written language. In health care, emphasis is placed on the development of a system of medical institutions. For example, if in 1917 there were 12 clinics and only 32 doctors in the entire North Caucasus, then in 1939 there were 335 doctors in Dagestan alone. At the same time, 14% of them were from the original nationality.

Reasons for the formation of the USSR

It happened not only thanks to the initiative of the leadership of the Communist Party. For many centuries, the prerequisites were formed for the unification of peoples into a single state. The harmony of the association has deep historical, economic, military-political and cultural roots. The former Russian Empire united 185 nationalities and nationalities. All of them went through a common historical path. During this time, a system of economic and economic ties has developed. They defended their freedom, absorbed the best of each other's cultural heritage. And, of course, they did not feel hostility towards each other.
It is worth considering that at that time the entire territory of the country was surrounded by hostile states. This also influenced the unification of peoples to no lesser extent.

On December 30, 1922, the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was approved at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets.

In December, the Union, in July - the government.

The agreement on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed on December 29, 1922 at a conference of delegations from the congresses of Soviets of the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, BSSR and ZSFSR and approved by the First All-Union Congress of Soviets. December 30 is considered the official date of the formation of the USSR, although the government of the USSR and the allied ministries were created only in July 1923.

From 4 to 16.

Over the years, the number of union republics in the USSR varied from 4 to 16, but for the longest time the Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics - the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Moldavian SSR, the Armenian SSR, the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Uzbek SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Turkmen SSR, Tajik SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR and Estonian SSR.

Three Constitutions in 69 years.

For nearly 69 years of its existence, the Soviet Union has changed three constitutions, which were adopted in 1924, 1936 and 1977. According to the first, the All-Union Congress of Soviets was the highest body of state power in the country, according to the second, the bicameral Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The third constitution also initially had a bicameral parliament, which in the 1988 edition gave way to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.

Kalinin led the USSR the longest.

Legally, the head of state in the Soviet Union in different years was considered the Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the President of the USSR. Formally, the longest head of the USSR was Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, who for 16 years held the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and then for eight years was the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The flag was approved later than the Constitution.

In the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR, it was determined that the new state has its own flag, but it was not given a clear description. In January 1924, the first Constitution of the USSR was approved, but there was no indication of how the flag of the new country looked like. And only in April 1924, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR approved a scarlet flag with a red five-pointed star, a sickle and a hammer as a flag.

In America - stars, in the USSR - slogans.

In 1923, the coat of arms of the Soviet Union was approved - the image of a sickle and a hammer against the background of the globe, in the rays of the sun and framed by ears of corn, with an inscription in the languages ​​of the union republics "Proletarians of all countries, unite!". The number of inscriptions depended on the number of republics in the USSR, just as the number of stars on the US flag depends on the number of states.

universal anthem.

From 1922 to 1943, the anthem of the Soviet Union was "The Internationale" - a French song with music by Pierre Degeyter and words by Eugene Pottier, translated by Arkady Kots. In December 1943, a new national anthem was created and approved with lyrics by Sergei Mikhalkov and Gabriel El-Registan and music by Alexander Alexandrov. Alexandrov's music with a modified text by Mikhalkov is currently the anthem of Russia.

A country the size of a mainland.

The Soviet Union occupied an area of ​​22,400,000 square kilometers, being by this indicator the largest country on the planet. The size of the USSR was comparable to the size of North America, including the territories of the USA, Canada and Mexico.

The boundary is one and a half equator.

The Soviet Union had the longest border in the world, over 60,000 kilometers, and bordered on 14 states. It is curious that the length of the border of modern Russia is almost the same - about 60,900 km. At the same time, Russia borders on 18 states - 16 recognized and 2 partially recognized.

The highest point of the Union.

The highest point of the Soviet Union was a mountain in the Tajik SSR with a height of 7495 meters, which in different years was called Stalin Peak and Communism Peak. In 1998, the authorities of Tajikistan gave it a third name - Samani Peak, in honor of the emir who founded the first Tajik state.

Unique capital.

Despite the tradition that existed in the USSR of renaming cities in honor of prominent Soviet figures, this process did not actually affect the capitals of the Union republics. The only exception was the capital of the Kirghiz SSR, the city of Frunze, renamed in honor of the Soviet commander Mikhail Frunze, who was a local native. At the same time, the city was first renamed, and then became the capital of the union republic. In 1991, Frunze was renamed Bishkek.

The Soviet Union in the mid-1950s - early 1960s made a kind of "scientific and technical hat-trick" - in 1954 it created the world's first nuclear power plant, in 1957 it launched the world's first artificial satellite into orbit, and in 1961 launched the world's first manned spacecraft. These events took place respectively 9, 12 and 15 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, in which the USSR suffered the greatest material and human losses among the participating countries.

The USSR did not lose wars.

During its existence, the Soviet Union officially participated in three wars - the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and the Soviet-Japanese War of 1945. All these armed conflicts ended with the victory of the Soviet Union.

1204 Olympic medals.

During the existence of the USSR, athletes of the Soviet Union took part in 18 Olympics (9 summer and 9 winter), winning 1204 medals (473 gold, 376 silver and 355 bronze). According to this indicator, the Soviet Union to this day ranks second, second only to the United States. For comparison, the third-placed Great Britain has 806 Olympic awards with 49 participation in the Olympic Games. As for modern Russia, it takes 9th place - 521 medals after 11 Olympiads.

First and last referendum.

In the entire history of the existence of the USSR, the only all-Union referendum was held, which took place on March 17, 1991. It raised the question of the future existence of the USSR. More than 77 percent of the referendum participants voted for the preservation of the Soviet Union. In December of the same year, the heads of the RSFSR of the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR announced the termination of the existence of a single country.

Happy New Year 2017 to all users of the USSR website. I wish you and your family and friends all the best and prosperity. May the new year bring only good, kind, eternal!

USSR
the former largest state in the world in terms of area, the second in economic and military power and the third in terms of population. The USSR was created on December 30, 1922, when the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) merged with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. All these republics arose after the October Revolution and the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. From 1956 to 1991, the USSR consisted of 15 union republics. In September 1991 Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia withdrew from the union. On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus at a meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha announced that the USSR had ceased to exist, and agreed to form a free association - the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On December 21, in Alma-Ata, the leaders of 11 republics signed a protocol on the formation of this community. On December 25, the President of the USSR MS Gorbachev resigned, and the next day the USSR was dissolved.

Geographic location and boundaries. The USSR occupied the eastern half of Europe and the northern third of Asia. Its territory was located north of 35°N. between 20°E and 169°W The Soviet Union was washed in the north by the Arctic Ocean, ice-bound for most of the year; in the east - the Bering, Okhotsk and Japanese seas, freezing in winter; in the southeast it bordered on land with the DPRK, China and Mongolia; in the south - with Afghanistan and Iran; in the southwest with Turkey; in the west with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Finland and Norway. Occupying a significant part of the coast of the Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas, the USSR, however, did not have direct access to the warm open waters of the oceans.
Square. Since 1945, the area of ​​the USSR has been 22,402.2 thousand square meters. km, including the White Sea (90 thousand sq. km) and the Sea of ​​Azov (37.3 thousand sq. km). As a result of the collapse of the Russian Empire during the First World War and the Civil War of 1914-1920, Finland, central Poland, the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, the southern part of Armenia and the Uryankhai Territory (which in 1921 became nominally independent Tuvan People's Republic) were lost. Republic). At the time of its founding in 1922, the USSR had an area of ​​21,683 thousand square meters. km. In 1926 the Soviet Union annexed the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean. As a result of World War II, the following territories were annexed: the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus (from Poland) in 1939; the Karelian Isthmus (from Finland), Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and also Bessarabia with Northern Bukovina (from Romania) in 1940; the region of Pechenga, or Petsamo (since 1940 in Finland), and Tuva (as the Tuva ASSR) in 1944; the northern half of East Prussia (from Germany), southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands (since 1905 in Japan) in 1945.
Population. In 1989 the population of the USSR was 286,717 thousand people; more were only in China and India. During the 20th century it almost doubled, although overall growth lagged behind the global average. The famine years of 1921 and 1933, the First World War and the Civil War slowed down the population growth in the USSR, but perhaps the main reason for the backlog is the losses suffered by the USSR in World War II. Only direct losses amounted to more than 25 million people. If we take into account indirect losses - a decrease in the birth rate during wartime and an increased death rate from difficult living conditions, then the total figure is likely to exceed 50 million people.
National composition and languages. The USSR was created as a multinational union state, consisting (since 1956, after the transformation of the Karelian-Finnish SSR into the Karelian ASSR, until September 1991) of 15 republics, which included 20 autonomous republics, 8 autonomous regions and 10 autonomous districts - all they were formed on a national basis. More than a hundred ethnic groups and peoples were officially recognized in the USSR; more than 70% of the total population were Slavic peoples, mostly Russians, who settled throughout the vast territory of the state within 12-
19th centuries and until 1917 they occupied a dominant position even in those areas where they did not constitute a majority. Non-Russian peoples in this area (Tatars, Mordovians, Komi, Kazakhs, etc.) gradually assimilated in the process of interethnic communication. Although national cultures were encouraged in the republics of the USSR, the Russian language and culture remained a necessary condition for almost any career. The republics of the USSR received their names, as a rule, according to the nationality of the majority of their population, but in the two union republics - Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - Kazakhs and Kirghiz made up only 36% and 41% of the total population, and even less in many autonomous entities. The most homogeneous republic in terms of ethnic composition was Armenia, where more than 90% of the population were Armenians. Russians, Belarusians and Azerbaijanis made up more than 80% of the population in their national republics. Changes in the homogeneity of the ethnic composition of the population of the republics occurred as a result of migration and uneven population growth of various national groups. For example, the peoples of Central Asia, with their high birth rate and low mobility, absorbed a mass of Russian immigrants, but retained and even increased their quantitative superiority, while approximately the same influx into the Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia, which had a low birth rate of their own, disrupted the balance is not in favor of the indigenous nationality.
Slavs. This language family consists of Russians (Great Russians), Ukrainians and Belarusians. The share of Slavs in the USSR gradually decreased (from 85% in 1922 to 77% in 1959 and to 70% in 1989), mainly due to the low rate of natural growth compared to the peoples of the southern outskirts. Russians made up 51% of the total population in 1989 (65% in 1922, 55% in 1959).
Central Asian peoples. The most numerous non-Slavic group of peoples in the Soviet Union was the group of peoples of Central Asia. Most of these 34 million people (1989) (including Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Turkmens) speak Turkic languages; Tajiks, numbering more than 4 million people, speak a dialect of the Iranian language. These peoples traditionally adhere to the Muslim religion, are engaged in agriculture and live in overpopulated oases and dry steppes. The Central Asian region became part of Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century; before there were competing and often at enmity with each other emirates and khanates. In the Central Asian republics in the middle of the 20th century. there were almost 11 million Russian immigrants, most of whom lived in cities.
Peoples of the Caucasus. The second largest group of non-Slavic peoples in the USSR (15 million people in 1989) were peoples living on both sides of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian Seas up to the borders with Turkey and Iran. The most numerous of them are Georgians and Armenians with their own forms of Christianity and ancient civilizations, and Turkic-speaking Muslims of Azerbaijan, related to Turks and Iranians. These three peoples accounted for almost two-thirds of the non-Russian population in the region. The rest of the non-Russians included a large number of small ethnic groups, including Iranian-speaking Orthodox Ossetians, Mongolian-speaking Buddhist Kalmyks, and Muslim Chechen, Ingush, Avar, and other peoples.
Baltic peoples. Along the coast of the Baltic Sea lives approx. 5.5 million people (1989) of the three main ethnic groups: Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. Estonians speak a language close to Finnish; Lithuanian and Latvian belong to the group of Baltic languages ​​close to Slavic. Lithuanians and Latvians are geographically intermediate between Russians and Germans, who, along with Poles and Swedes, have had a great cultural influence on them. The rate of natural increase in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which seceded from the Russian Empire in 1918, existed as independent states between the world wars and regained independence in September 1991, is about the same as that of the Slavs.
Other nations. The rest of the national groups in 1989 accounted for less than 10% of the population of the USSR; these were diverse peoples who lived within the main zone of settlement of the Slavs or dispersed among the vast and desert expanses of the Far North. The most numerous among them are the Tatars, after the Uzbeks and Kazakhs - the third largest (6.65 million people in 1989) non-Slavic people of the USSR. The term "Tatar" was applied in the course of Russian history to various ethnic groups. More than half of the Tatars (Turkic-speaking descendants of the northern group of Mongolian tribes) live between the middle reaches of the Volga and the Urals. After the Mongol-Tatar yoke, which lasted from the middle of the 13th to the end of the 15th century, several groups of Tatars caused concern to the Russians for several more centuries, and the significant number of the Tatar people on the Crimean Peninsula was conquered only at the end of the 18th century. Other large national groups in the Volga-Ural region are the Turkic-speaking Chuvash, Bashkirs and Finno-Ugric Mordovians, Mari and Komi. Among them, the process of assimilation, natural in the predominantly Slavic community, continued, partly due to the influence of increasing urbanization. This process was not so fast among the traditional pastoral peoples - Buddhist Buryats living around Lake Baikal, and Yakuts inhabiting the banks of the Lena River and its tributaries. Finally, there are many small northern peoples engaged in hunting and cattle breeding, scattered in the northern part of Siberia and regions of the Far East; there are approx. 150 thousand people.
national question. In the late 1980s, the national question came to the forefront of political life. The traditional policy of the CPSU, which sought to eliminate nations and ultimately create a homogeneous "Soviet" people, ended in failure. Ethnic conflicts broke out, for example, between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Ossetians and Ingush. In addition, anti-Russian sentiments were revealed - for example, in the Baltic republics. In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed along the borders of the national republics, and many ethnic antagonisms went to the newly formed countries that retained the old national-administrative division.
Urbanization. The pace and scale of urbanization in the Soviet Union since the late 1920s is probably unparalleled in history. In both 1913 and 1926, less than one-fifth of the population lived in cities. However, by 1961, the urban population in the USSR began to exceed the rural population (Great Britain reached this ratio around 1860, the USA around 1920), and in 1989 66% of the USSR population lived in cities. The extent of Soviet urbanization is evidenced by the fact that the urban population of the Soviet Union increased from 63 million people in 1940 to 189 million in 1989. In its last years, the USSR had about the same level of urbanization as in Latin America.
Growth of cities. Before the start of industrial, urbanization and transport revolutions in the second half of the 19th century. most Russian cities had a small population. In 1913, only Moscow and St. Petersburg, founded in the 12th and 18th centuries, respectively, had a population of more than 1 million people. In 1991, there were 24 such cities in the Soviet Union. The first Slavic cities were founded in the 6th-7th centuries; during the Mongol invasion of the middle of the 13th century. most of them were destroyed. These cities, which arose as military-administrative strongholds, had a fortified kremlin, usually on an elevated place by the river, surrounded by craft suburbs (towns). When trade became an important activity of the Slavs, cities such as Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk, and later Moscow, which were at the crossroads of waterways, rapidly increased in size and influence. After the nomads blocked the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks in 1083 and the Mongol-Tatars destroyed Kiev in 1240, Moscow, located in the center of the river system of northeastern Rus', gradually turned into the center of the Russian state. The position of Moscow changed when Peter the Great moved the country's capital to St. Petersburg (1703). In its development, St. Petersburg by the end of the 18th century. overtook Moscow and remained the largest of the Russian cities until the end of the Civil War. The foundations for the growth of most large cities in the USSR were laid during the last 50 years of the tsarist regime, during the period of rapid development of industry, the construction of railways and the development of international trade. In 1913, there were 30 cities in Russia with a population of over 100,000 people, including commercial and industrial centers in the Volga region and Novorossiya, such as Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, and Yuzovka (now Donetsk). The rapid growth of cities during the Soviet period can be divided into three stages. During the period between the world wars, the development of heavy industry was the basis for the growth of such cities as Magnitogorsk, Novokuznetsk, Karaganda and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. However, cities in the Moscow region, Siberia and Ukraine grew especially intensively at this time. Between the 1939 and 1959 censuses there was a marked shift in urban settlement. Two-thirds of all cities that had a population of over 50,000, doubling during that time, were located mainly between the Volga and Lake Baikal, mainly along the Trans-Siberian Railway. From the late 1950s to 1990, the growth of Soviet cities slowed down; only the capitals of the union republics were distinguished by faster growth.
Largest cities. In 1991 there were 24 cities in the Soviet Union with more than one million inhabitants. These included Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Nizhny Novgorod, Kharkov, Kuibyshev (now Samara), Minsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Kazan, Perm, Ufa, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd and Donetsk in the European part; Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and Chelyabinsk - in the Urals; Novosibirsk and Omsk - in Siberia; Tashkent and Alma-Ata - in Central Asia; Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan are in Transcaucasia. Another 6 cities had a population of 800 thousand to one million inhabitants and 28 cities - more than 500 thousand inhabitants. Moscow, with a population of 8967 thousand people in 1989, is one of the largest cities in the world. It grew up in the center of European Russia and became the main hub of the railroad, highway, airline and pipeline networks of a very centralized country. Moscow is the center of political life, development of culture, science and new industrial technologies. St. Petersburg (from 1924 to 1991 - Leningrad), in which 5020 thousand people lived in 1989, was built at the mouth of the Neva by Peter the Great and became the capital of the empire and its main port. After the Bolshevik revolution, it became a regional center and gradually fell into decay due to the increased development of Soviet industry in the east, a decrease in foreign trade and the transfer of the capital to Moscow. St. Petersburg suffered greatly during the Second World War and reached its pre-war population only in 1962. Kiev (2587 thousand people in 1989), located on the banks of the Dnieper River, was the main city of Rus' until the transfer of the capital to Vladimir (1169). The beginning of its modern growth dates back to the last third of the 19th century, when the industrial and agricultural development of Russia proceeded at a rapid pace. Kharkov (with a population of 1,611,000 in 1989) is the second largest city in Ukraine. Until 1934, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, it was formed as an industrial city at the end of the 19th century, being an important railway junction connecting Moscow and heavy industry regions in southern Ukraine. Donetsk, founded in 1870 (1110 thousand people in 1989) - was the center of a large industrial agglomeration in the Donetsk coal basin. Dnepropetrovsk (1179 thousand people in 1989), which was founded as the administrative center of Novorossiya in the second half of the 18th century. and was previously called Yekaterinoslav, was the center of a group of industrial cities in the lower reaches of the Dnieper. Odessa, located on the Black Sea coast (population 1,115,000 in 1989), grew rapidly at the end of the 19th century. as the main southern port of the country. It still remains an important industrial and cultural center. Nizhny Novgorod (from 1932 to 1990 - Gorky) - the traditional venue for the annual All-Russian Fair, first held in 1817 - is located at the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers. In 1989, 1438 thousand people lived in it, and it was the center of river navigation and the automotive industry. Below the Volga is Samara (from 1935 to 1991 Kuibyshev), with a population of 1257 thousand people (1989), located near the largest oil and gas fields and powerful hydroelectric power stations, in the place where the Moscow-Chelyabinsk railway line crosses the Volga. A powerful impetus to the development of Samara was given by the evacuation of industrial enterprises from the west after the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. 2,400 km young (founded in 1896) among the top ten largest cities in the USSR. It is the transport, industrial and scientific center of Siberia. To the west of it, where the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Irtysh River, is Omsk (1148 thousand people in 1989). Having ceded the role of the capital of Siberia in Soviet times to Novosibirsk, it remains the center of an important agricultural region, as well as a major center for aircraft manufacturing and oil refining. To the west of Omsk is Yekaterinburg (from 1924 to 1991 - Sverdlovsk), with a population of 1,367 thousand people (1989), which is the center of the metallurgical industry of the Urals. Chelyabinsk (1143 thousand people in 1989), also located in the Urals, south of Yekaterinburg, became the new "gateway" to Siberia after the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began from here in 1891. Chelyabinsk, a center of metallurgy and mechanical engineering, with only 20,000 inhabitants in 1897, developed faster than Sverdlovsk during the Soviet period. Baku, with a population of 1,757,000 in 1989, located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, is located near oil fields, which for almost a century were the main source of oil in Russia and the Soviet Union, and at one time in the world. The ancient city of Tbilisi (pop. 1,260,000 in 1989) is also located in Transcaucasia, an important regional center and capital of Georgia. Yerevan (1199 people in 1989) - the capital of Armenia; its rapid growth from 30 thousand people in 1910 testified to the process of the revival of Armenian statehood. In the same way, the growth of Minsk - from 130 thousand inhabitants in 1926 to 1589 thousand in 1989 - is an example of the rapid development of the capitals of the national republics (in 1939 Belarus regained the borders that it had, being part of the Russian Empire). The city of Tashkent (population in 1989 - 2073 thousand people) is the capital of Uzbekistan and the economic center of Central Asia. The ancient city of Tashkent was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1865, when the Russian conquest of Central Asia began.
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL SYSTEM
Background of the question. The Soviet state arose as a result of two coups that took place in Russia in 1917. The first of them, February, replaced the tsarist autocracy with an unstable political structure in which power, due to the general collapse of state power and the rule of law, was divided between the Provisional Government, which consisted of members of the former legislative assembly (Dumas), and councils of workers' and soldiers' deputies elected in factories and military units. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 25 (November 7), representatives of the Bolsheviks announced the overthrow of the Provisional Government as incapable of resolving the crisis situations that arose due to failures at the front, famine in the cities and the expropriation of property by peasants from landowners. The governing bodies of the soviets consisted overwhelmingly of representatives of the radical wing, and the new government - the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) - was formed by the Bolsheviks and left-wing socialist revolutionaries (SRs). At the head (SNK) stood the leader of the Bolsheviks V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin). This government proclaimed Russia the world's first socialist republic and promised to hold elections to the Constituent Assembly. Having lost the elections, the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly (January 6, 1918), established a dictatorship and unleashed terror, which led to a civil war. Under these circumstances, the soviets lost their real significance in the political life of the country. The Bolshevik Party (RKP (b), VKP (b), later the CPSU) led the punitive and administrative bodies created to manage the country and the nationalized economy, as well as the Red Army. The return to a more democratic order (NEP) in the mid-1920s was replaced by terror campaigns associated with the activities of the General Secretary of the CPSU (b) I.V. Stalin and the struggle in the party leadership. The political police (Cheka - OGPU - NKVD) turned into a powerful institution of the political system, containing a huge system of labor camps (GULAG) and spreading the practice of repressions to the entire population, from ordinary citizens to the leaders of the Communist Party, which claimed the lives of many millions of people. After Stalin's death in 1953, the power of the political secret services was weakened for some time; formally, some of the power functions of the soviets were also restored, but in fact the changes turned out to be insignificant. Only in 1989 a series of constitutional amendments made it possible for the first time after 1912 to hold alternative elections and modernize the state system, in which democratic authorities began to play a much greater role. The constitutional amendment of 1990 abolished the monopoly on political power established by the Communist Party in 1918 and established the post of President of the USSR with broad powers. At the end of August 1991, the supreme power in the USSR collapsed following a failed state coup organized by a group of conservative leaders of the Communist Party and government. On December 8, 1991, the presidents of the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus at a meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha announced the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a free interstate association. On December 26, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to dissolve itself, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
State device. From the moment of its creation in December 1922 on the ruins of the Russian Empire, the USSR has been a totalitarian one-party state. The party-state exercised its power, called the "dictatorship of the proletariat", through the Central Committee, the Politburo and the government controlled by them, the system of councils, trade unions and other structures. The monopoly of the party apparatus on power, the total control of the state over the economy, public life and culture led to frequent mistakes in public policy, the gradual lag and degradation of the country. The Soviet Union, like other totalitarian states of the 20th century, turned out to be unviable and was forced to start reforms in the late 1980s. Under the leadership of the party apparatus, they acquired a purely cosmetic character and could not prevent the collapse of the state. The state structure of the Soviet Union is described below, taking into account the changes that took place in the last years before the collapse of the USSR.
Presidency. The post of president was established by the Supreme Soviet on March 13, 1990, at the suggestion of its chairman M.S. Gorbachev, after the Central Committee of the CPSU agreed with this idea a month earlier. Gorbachev was elected president of the USSR by secret ballot at the Congress of People's Deputies after the Supreme Soviet concluded that direct popular elections would take time and could destabilize the situation in the country. The president, by decree of the Supreme Council, is the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He assists in organizing the work of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet; has the power to issue administrative decrees, which are binding on the territory of the entire Union, and to appoint a number of senior officials. These include the Committee for Constitutional Supervision (subject to approval by the Congress), the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and the Chairman of the Supreme Court (subject to approval by the Supreme Council). The President may suspend decisions of the Council of Ministers.
Congress of People's Deputies. The Congress of People's Deputies was defined in the constitution as "the highest body of state power in the USSR." The 1,500 deputies of the Congress were elected in accordance with the triple principle of representation: from the population, national formations and public organizations. All citizens aged 18 and over were eligible to vote; all citizens over the age of 21 had the right to be elected deputies of the Congress. District nominations were open; their number was not limited. The congress, elected for a period of five years, was to meet every year for several days. At its first meeting, the congress elected by secret ballot from among its members the Supreme Council, as well as the chairman and first deputy chairman of the Supreme Council. The congress considered the most important state questions, such as the national economic plan and budget; Amendments to the constitution could be passed by two-thirds of the votes. He could approve (or repeal) the laws passed by the Supreme Council and had the power to overrule any decision of the government by a majority of votes. At each of its annual sessions, the Congress, by voting, was obliged to rotate one fifth of the Supreme Council.
The Supreme Council. 542 deputies elected by the Congress of People's Deputies to the Supreme Soviet constituted the current legislative body of the USSR. It was convened annually for two sessions, each lasting 3-4 months. It had two chambers: the Council of the Union - from among the deputies from national public organizations and from majoritarian territorial districts - and the Council of Nationalities, where deputies elected from national-territorial districts and republican public organizations met. Each chamber elected its own chairman. Decisions were made by a majority of deputies in each chamber, disagreements were resolved with the help of a conciliation commission consisting of members of the chambers, and then at a joint meeting of both chambers; when it was impossible to reach a compromise between the chambers, the decision of the issue was referred to the Congress. The laws adopted by the Supreme Council could be controlled by the Committee of Constitutional Supervision. This Committee consisted of 23 members who were not deputies and did not hold other public positions. The Committee could act on its own initiative or at the request of the legislative and executive authorities. He had the power to temporarily suspend laws or those administrative regulations that were contrary to the constitution or other laws of the country. The Committee communicated its opinions to the bodies that passed laws or issued decrees, but was not entitled to repeal the law or decree in question. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a collective body consisting of a chairman, a first deputy and 15 deputies (from each republic), chairmen of both chambers and standing committees of the Supreme Soviet, chairmen of the Supreme Soviets of the Union republics and a chairman of the People's Control Committee. The Presidium organized the work of the Congress and the Supreme Council and its standing committees; he could issue his own decrees and hold nationwide referendums on issues raised by the Congress. He also gave accreditations to foreign diplomats and, in the intervals between sessions of the Supreme Council, had the right to decide questions of war and peace.
Ministries. The executive branch of government consisted of almost 40 ministries and 19 state committees. The ministries were organized along functional lines - foreign affairs, agriculture, communications, etc. - while state committees carried out cross-functional relations, such as planning, supply, labor and sports. The Council of Ministers included the chairman, several of his deputies, ministers and heads of state committees (all of them were appointed by the chairman of the government and approved by the Supreme Council), as well as the chairmen of the Councils of Ministers of all union republics. The Council of Ministers carried out foreign and domestic policy, ensured the implementation of state national economic plans. In addition to its own resolutions and orders, the Council of Ministers developed legislative drafts and sent them to the Supreme Council. The general part of the work of the Council of Ministers was carried out by a government group consisting of the chairman, his deputies and several key ministers. The chairman was the only member of the Council of Ministers who was a member of the deputies of the Supreme Council. Individual ministries were organized on the same principle as the Council of Ministers. Each minister was assisted by deputies who supervised the activities of one or more departments (head offices) of the ministry. These officials constituted the collegium, which functioned as the collective governing body of the ministry. Enterprises and institutions subordinate to the ministry carried out their work on the basis of assignments and instructions from the ministry. Some ministries acted at the all-Union level. Others, organized along the union-republican principle, had a structure of dual subordination: the ministry at the republican level was accountable both to the existing union ministry and to the legislative bodies (Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet) of their own republic. Thus, the union ministry carried out general management of the industry, and the republican ministry, together with regional executive and legislative bodies, developed more detailed measures for their implementation in their republic. As a rule, union ministries controlled industries, while union-republican ministries directed the production of consumer goods and services. Union ministries had more powerful resources, better provided their workers with housing and wages, and had more influence in the conduct of general government policy than the union-republican ministries.
Republican and local government. The union republics that made up the USSR had their own state and party bodies and were formally considered sovereign. The constitution gave each of them the right to secede, and some of them even had their own foreign ministries, but in reality their independence was illusory. Therefore, it would be more accurate to interpret the sovereignty of the republics of the USSR as a form of administrative government that took into account the specific interests of the party leadership of one or another national group. But during the 1990s, the Supreme Soviets of all the republics, following Lithuania, re-proclaimed their sovereignty and adopted resolutions that republican laws should have priority over all-Union ones. In 1991 the republics became independent states. The management structure of the union republics was similar to the system of government at the union level, but the Supreme Soviets of the republics had one chamber each, and the number of ministries in the republican councils of ministers was less than in the union. The same organizational structure, but with an even smaller number of ministries, was in the autonomous republics. The larger union republics were divided into regions (the RSFSR also had regional units of a less homogeneous national composition, which were called territories). The regional government consisted of a Council of Deputies and an executive committee, which were under the jurisdiction of their republic in much the same way that the republic was connected with the all-Union government. Elections to regional councils were held every five years. City and district councils and executive committees were created in each district. These local authorities were subordinate to the corresponding regional (territorial) authorities.
Communist Party. The ruling and only legitimate political party in the USSR before its monopoly of power was shattered by perestroika and free elections in 1990 was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU justified its right to power on the basis of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of which it considered itself the vanguard. Once a small group of revolutionaries (in 1917 it had about 20,000 members), the CPSU eventually became a mass organization with 18 million members. In the late 1980s, approximately 45% of party members were employees, approx. 10% - peasants and 45% - workers. Membership in the CPSU was usually preceded by membership in the youth organization of the party - the Komsomol, whose members in 1988 were 36 million people. aged 14 to 28 years. People usually join the party from the age of 25. To become a member of the party, the applicant had to receive a recommendation from party members with at least five years of experience and demonstrate devotion to the ideas of the CPSU. If the members of the local party organization voted for the admission of the applicant, and the district party committee approved this decision, then the applicant became a candidate for party membership (without the right to vote) with a trial period of one year, after which he successfully received the status of a party member. According to the charter of the CPSU, its members were required to pay membership dues, attend party meetings, be an example for others at work and in their personal lives, and also promote the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and the program of the CPSU. For an omission in any of these areas, a party member was reprimanded, and if the matter turned out to be serious enough, they were expelled from the party. However, the party in power was not a union of sincere like-minded people. Since promotion depended on party membership, many used the party card for career purposes. The CPSU was the so-called. a new type of party organized on the principles of "democratic centralism", according to which all the highest bodies in the organizational structure were elected by the lower ones, and all the lower bodies, in turn, were obliged to comply with the decisions of higher authorities. Until 1989, the CPSU had approx. 420 thousand primary party organizations (PPO). They were formed in all institutions and enterprises where at least 3 or more party members worked. All PPOs elected their leader - the secretary, and those in which the number of members exceeded 150 were headed by secretaries released from their main work and engaged only in party affairs. The released secretary became a representative of the party apparatus. His name appeared in the nomenklatura - one of the lists of positions that party authorities approved for all managerial posts in the Soviet Union. The second category of party members in the PPO was "activists". These people often held positions of responsibility - for example, as members of the party bureau. In total, the party apparatus consisted of approx. 2-3% of the members of the CPSU; activists made up about another 10-12%. All PPOs within a given administrative region elected delegates to the regional party conference. On the basis of the nomenklatura list, the district conference elected the district committee (raykom). The district committee consisted of leading officials of the district (some of them were party apparatchiks, others headed councils, factories, collective farms and state farms, institutions and military units) and party activists who did not hold official posts. The district committee elected, on the basis of recommendations from higher authorities, a bureau and a secretariat of three secretaries: the first was fully responsible for party affairs in the region, the other two supervised one or more areas of party activity. The departments of the district committee - personal accounting, propaganda, industry, agriculture - functioned under the control of secretaries. The secretaries and one or more heads of these departments sat at the bureau of the district committee together with other senior officials of the district, such as the chairman of the district council and heads of large enterprises and institutions. The bureau represented the political elite of the respective area. Party bodies above the district level were organized like district committees, but the selection in them was even stricter. Regional conferences sent delegates to the regional (in large cities - city) party conference, which elected the regional (city) committee of the party. Each of the 166 elected regional committees, therefore, consisted of the elite of the regional center, the elite of the second echelon and several activists of the regional scale. The regional committee, based on the recommendations of higher bodies, chose the bureau and the secretariat. These bodies supervised the bureaus and secretariats of the district level reporting to them. In each republic, the delegates elected by the party conferences met every five years at the party congresses of the republics. The congress, after hearing and discussing the reports of the leaders of the party, adopted a program outlining the policy of the party for the next five years. Then the governing bodies were re-elected. At the level of the entire country, the CPSU congress (approximately 5,000 delegates) represented the highest organ of power in the party. According to the charter, the congress was convened every five years for sessions lasting about ten days. The reports of the top leaders were followed by short speeches by party workers at all levels and several ordinary delegates. The congress adopted the program, which was prepared by the secretariat, taking into account the changes and additions made by the delegates. However, the most important act was the election of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which was entrusted with the management of the party and the state. The Central Committee of the CPSU consisted of 475 members; almost all of them held leading positions in the party, state and public organizations. At its plenary meetings, held twice a year, the Central Committee formulated the party's policy on one or more issues - industry, agriculture, education, the judiciary, foreign relations, and so on. In the event of disagreements among the members of the Central Committee, he had the authority to convene all-Union party conferences. The Central Committee assigned control and management of the party apparatus to the secretariat, and the responsibility for coordinating policies and solving critical problems - to the Politburo. The secretariat reported to the general secretary, who supervised the activities of the entire party apparatus with the help of several (up to 10) secretaries, each of whom controlled the work of one or more departments (about 20 in total), of which the secretariat consisted. The Secretariat approved the nomenclature of all leading positions at the national, republican and regional levels. Its officials controlled and, if necessary, directly interfered in the affairs of state, economic and public organizations. In addition, the secretariat directed an all-Union network of party schools that trained promising workers for advancement in the party and in the state arena, as well as in the media.
Political modernization. In the second half of the 1980s, MS Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, embarked on a new policy known as perestroika. The main idea of ​​the perestroika policy was to overcome the conservatism of the party-state system through reforms and adapt the Soviet Union to modern realities and problems. Perestroika included three major changes in political life. First, under the slogan of publicity, the boundaries of freedom of speech have expanded. Censorship has weakened, the former atmosphere of fear has almost disappeared. A significant part of the long-hidden history of the USSR was made available. Party and state sources of information began to report more frankly on the state of affairs in the country. Secondly, perestroika revived the idea of ​​grassroots self-government. Self-government involved members of any organization - a factory, a collective farm, a university, etc. - in the process of making key decisions and assumed the manifestation of initiative. The third feature of perestroika, democratization, was linked to the previous two. The idea here was that full information and a free exchange of opinions would help society make decisions in a democratic manner. Democratization broke sharply with the old political practice. After leaders began to be elected on an alternative basis, their responsibility to the electorate increased. This change weakened the dominance of the party apparatus and undermined the cohesion of the nomenklatura. As perestroika moved forward, the struggle intensified between those who preferred the old methods of control and coercion and those who championed the new methods of democratic leadership. This struggle came to a head in August 1991, when a group of party and state leaders attempted to seize power with a coup d'état. The putsch failed on the third day. Shortly thereafter, the CPSU was temporarily banned.
Legal and judicial system. The Soviet Union inherited nothing from the legal culture of the Russian Empire that preceded it. During the years of revolution and civil war, the communist regime regarded the law and the courts as a weapon in the struggle against class enemies. The concept of "revolutionary legality" continued to exist, despite the relaxation of the 1920s, until Stalin's death in 1953. During the years of the Khrushchev "thaw", the authorities tried to revive the idea of ​​"socialist legality" that had arisen in the 1920s. The arbitrariness of the repressive organs was weakened, terror was stopped, and more stringent judicial procedures were introduced. However, from the point of view of law, order and justice, these measures were insufficient. The legal ban on "anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation," for example, was interpreted extremely broadly. On the basis of these pseudo-legal provisions, people were often found guilty in court and sentenced to imprisonment, imprisonment with a stay in a corrective labor institution, or sent to psychiatric hospitals. Persons who were accused of "anti-Soviet activities" were also subjected to extrajudicial punishment. A. I. Solzhenitsyn, the world famous writer, and the famous musician M. L. Rostropovich were among those who were deprived of their citizenship and sent abroad; many were expelled from schools or fired from their jobs. Legal abuses took many forms. First, the activities of the repressive bodies on the basis of party instructions narrowed or even nullified the scope of legality. Secondly, the party actually remained above the law. Mutual responsibility of party officials prevented the investigation of the crimes of high-ranking members of the party. This practice was supplemented by corruption and the protection of those who violated the law under the guise of party bosses. Finally, party organs exerted a strong unofficial influence on the courts. The policy of perestroika proclaimed the rule of law. In accordance with this concept, the law was recognized as the main instrument for regulating social relations - above all other acts or decrees of the party and government. The execution of the law was the prerogative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the State Security Committee (KGB). Both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB were organized according to the Union-Republican principle of dual subordination, with departments from the national to the district level. Both of these organizations included paramilitary units (border guards in the KGB system, internal troops and special police OMON - in the Ministry of Internal Affairs). As a rule, the KGB dealt with problems one way or another related to politics, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs dealt with criminal offenses. The internal functions of the KGB were counterintelligence, protection of state secrets and control over the "subversive" activities of the opposition (dissidents). To carry out its tasks, the KGB worked both through the "special departments" that it organized in large institutions, and through a network of informants. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was organized into departments that corresponded to its main functions: criminal investigation, prisons and correctional institutions, passport control and registration, investigation of economic crimes, traffic control and traffic inspection and patrol service. Soviet judicial law was based on the code of laws of the socialist state. At the national level and in each of the republics, there were criminal, civil and criminal procedure codes. The structure of the court was determined by the concept of "people's courts", which operated in every region of the country. District judges were appointed for five years by the regional or city council. "People's assessors", formally equal in rights with the judge, were elected for a period of two and a half years at meetings held at the place of work or residence. Regional courts consisted of judges appointed by the Supreme Soviets of the respective republics. Judges of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the Supreme Courts of the Union and Autonomous Republics and Regions were elected by the Soviets of People's Deputies at their respective levels. Both civil and criminal cases were first heard in the district and city people's courts, the verdicts at which were adopted by a majority vote of the judge and people's assessors. Appeals were sent to higher courts at the regional and republican levels and could go as far as the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had significant powers of supervision over lower courts, but had no power to review judgments. The main body of control over the observance of the rule of law was the prosecutor's office, which exercised general legal supervision. The Prosecutor General was appointed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In turn, the Prosecutor General appointed the heads of his staff at the national level and prosecutors in each of the Union Republics, Autonomous Republics, Territories and Regions. Prosecutors at the city and district levels were appointed by the prosecutor of the corresponding union republic, reporting to him and the Prosecutor General. All prosecutors held office for a five-year term. In criminal cases, the accused had the right to use the services of a defense counsel - his own or appointed for him by the court. In both cases, the legal costs were minimal. Lawyers belonged to semi-state organizations known as "collegia", which existed in all cities and regional centers. In 1989, an independent bar association, the Union of Lawyers, was also organized. The lawyer had the right, on behalf of the client, to check the entire investigative file, but rarely represented his client during the preliminary investigation. Criminal codes in the Soviet Union applied the "public danger" standard to determine the seriousness of offenses and set appropriate penalties. For minor violations, suspended sentences or fines were usually applied. Those found guilty of more serious and socially dangerous offenses could be sentenced to work in a labor camp or imprisonment for up to 10 years. The death penalty was imposed for serious crimes such as premeditated murder, espionage and acts of terrorism. State security and international relations. The goals of Soviet state security have undergone a number of fundamental changes over time. At first, the Soviet state was conceived as the result of a world proletarian revolution, which, as the Bolsheviks hoped, would end the First World War. The Communist (III) International (Comintern), whose founding congress was held in Moscow in March 1919, was supposed to unite socialists all over the world to support revolutionary movements. Initially, the Bolsheviks did not even imagine that it was possible to build a socialist society (which, according to Marxist theory, corresponds to a more advanced stage of social development - more productive, freer, with higher levels of education, culture and social well-being - compared to a developed capitalist society, which should precede it) in vast peasant Russia. The overthrow of the autocracy opened the way to power for them. When the post-war actions of the left forces in Europe (in Finland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy) collapsed, Soviet Russia found itself isolated. The Soviet state was forced to abandon the slogan of world revolution and follow the principle of peaceful coexistence (tactical alliances and economic cooperation) with its capitalist neighbors. Along with the strengthening of the state, the slogan of building socialism in one single country was put forward. As leader of the party after Lenin's death, Stalin took control of the Comintern, purged it of factionalists ("Trotskyites" and "Bukharinites"), and transformed it into an instrument of his policy. Stalin's foreign and domestic policy was the encouragement of German National Socialism and the accusation of the German Social Democrats of "social fascism", which made it very easy for Hitler to seize power in 1933; the dispossession of peasants in 1931-1933 and the extermination of the commanding staff of the Red Army during the "great terror" of 1936-1938; alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939-1941 - brought the country to the brink of death, although in the end the Soviet Union, at the cost of mass heroism and huge losses, managed to emerge victorious in World War II. After the war, which ended with the establishment of communist regimes in most countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Stalin declared the existence of "two camps" in the world and took over the leadership of the countries of the "socialist camp" to fight the implacably hostile "capitalist camp". The appearance of nuclear weapons in both camps has put humanity before the prospect of total annihilation. The burden of armaments became unbearable, and in the late 1980s the Soviet leadership reformulated the basic principles of its foreign policy, which came to be called "new thinking." The central idea of ​​the "new thinking" was that in the nuclear age the security of any state, and especially countries possessing nuclear weapons, can be based only on the mutual security of all parties. In accordance with this concept, Soviet policy gradually shifted towards global nuclear disarmament by the year 2000. To this end, the Soviet Union replaced its strategic doctrine of nuclear parity with prospective adversaries with that of "reasonable sufficiency" in order to prevent attack. Accordingly, he reduced his nuclear arsenal, as well as conventional armed forces, and proceeded to restructure them. The transition to "new thinking" in international relations led to a series of radical political changes in 1990 and 1991. At the UN, the USSR put forward diplomatic initiatives that contributed to the resolution of both regional conflicts and a number of global problems. The USSR changed its relations with former allies in Eastern Europe, abandoned the concept of "sphere of influence" in Asia and Latin America, and stopped intervening in conflicts arising in third world countries.
ECONOMIC HISTORY
Compared to Western Europe, Russia throughout its history has been an economically backward state. In view of the insecurity of its southeastern and western borders, Russia was often subjected to invasions from Asia and Europe. The Mongol-Tatar yoke and the Polish-Lithuanian expansion exhausted the resources of economic development. Despite its backwardness, Russia made attempts to catch up with Western Europe. The most decisive attempt was made by Peter the Great at the beginning of the 18th century. Peter vigorously encouraged modernization and industrialization - mainly to increase the military power of Russia. The policy of external expansion was continued under Catherine the Great. The last push of tsarist Russia towards modernization came in the second half of the 19th century, when serfdom was abolished and the government implemented programs that stimulated the country's economic development. The state encouraged agricultural exports and attracted foreign capital. A grandiose railway construction program was launched, funded by both the state and private companies. Tariff protectionism and concessions stimulated the development of domestic industry. Bonds issued to noble landowners as compensation for their loss of serfs were redeemed by "redemption" payments by former serfs, thus forming an important source of domestic capital accumulation. Forcing the peasants to sell most of their produce for cash in order to make these payments, plus the fact that the nobles retained the best land, allowed the state to sell surplus agricultural products on foreign markets.
This resulted in a period of rapid industrial
development, when the average annual increase in industrial output reached 10-12%. Russia's gross national product tripled in 20 years from 1893 to 1913. After 1905, the program of Prime Minister Stolypin began to be implemented, aimed at encouraging large peasant farms that use hired labor. However, by the beginning of the First World War, Russia did not have time to complete the initiated reforms.
October Revolution and Civil War. Russia's participation in the First World War ended with a revolution in February - October (according to the new style - in March - November) 1917. The driving force behind this revolution was the desire of the peasantry to end the war and redistribute the land. The provisional government, which replaced the autocracy after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917 and consisted mainly of representatives of the bourgeoisie, was overthrown in October 1917. the world's first socialist republic. The very first decrees of the Council of People's Commissars proclaimed the end of the war and the lifelong and inalienable right of the peasants to use the land taken from the landowners. The most important economic sectors were nationalized - banks, grain trading, transport, military production and the oil industry. Private enterprises outside this "state-capitalist" sector were subject to workers' control through trade unions and factory councils. By the summer of 1918, the Civil War broke out. Most of the country, including Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Siberia, fell into the hands of opponents of the Bolshevik regime, the German occupation army and other foreign interventionists. Not believing in the strength of the position of the Bolsheviks, industrialists and the intelligentsia refused to cooperate with the new government.
War communism. In this critical situation, the communists found it necessary to establish centralized control over the economy. In the second half of 1918, all large and medium enterprises and most of the small enterprises were nationalized. To avoid starvation in the cities, the authorities requisitioned grain from the peasants. The "black market" flourished - food was exchanged for household items and industrial goods, which workers received as payment instead of depreciated rubles. The volume of industrial and agricultural production has declined sharply. The Communist Party in 1919 openly recognized this position in the economy, defining it as "war communism", i.e. "systematic regulation of consumption in a besieged fortress". War communism was seen by the authorities as the first step towards a truly communist economy. War communism enabled the Bolsheviks to mobilize human and production resources and win the Civil War.
New economic policy. By the spring of 1921, the Red Army had largely won a victory over its opponents. However, the economic situation was catastrophic. The volume of industrial production was barely 14% of the pre-war level, most of the country was starving. On March 1, 1921, the sailors of the garrison in Kronstadt rebelled - a key fortress in the defense of Petrograd (St. Petersburg). The most important goal of the new course of the party, soon called the NEP (new economic policy), was to increase labor productivity in all spheres of economic life. The forced seizure of grain ceased - the surplus was replaced by a tax in kind, which was paid as a certain proportion of the products produced by the peasant economy in excess of the consumption rate. Excluding the tax in kind, the surplus food remained the property of the peasants and could be sold on the market. This was followed by the legalization of private trade and private property, as well as the normalization of monetary circulation through a sharp reduction in state spending and the adoption of a balanced budget. In 1922, the State Bank issued a new stable monetary unit, backed by gold and goods, the chervonets. The "commanding heights" of the economy - fuel, metallurgy and military production, transport, banks and foreign trade - remained under the direct control of the state and were financed from the state budget. All other large nationalized enterprises were to operate independently on a commercial basis. These latter were allowed to unite in trusts, of which by 1923 there were 478; they worked ok. 75% of all employed in the industrial sector. Trusts were taxed on the same basis as the private economy. The most important heavy industry trusts were supplied by state orders; The main lever of control over the trusts was the State Bank, which had a monopoly on commercial credit. The new economic policy quickly brought successful results. By 1925, industrial production reached 75% of the pre-war level, and agricultural production was almost completely restored. However, the successes of the NEP confronted the Communist Party with new complex economic and social problems.
Discussion about industrialization. The suppression of the revolutionary uprisings of the left forces throughout Central Europe meant that Soviet Russia had to embark on socialist construction in an unfavorable international environment. Russian industry, devastated by world and civil wars, lagged far behind the industry of the then advanced capitalist countries of Europe and America. Lenin defined the social basis of the NEP as a bond between the small (but Communist Party-led) urban working class and the numerous but dispersed peasantry. In order to advance as far as possible towards socialism, Lenin suggested that the party adhere to three fundamental principles: 1) to encourage in every possible way the creation of production, marketing and purchasing peasant cooperatives; 2) to regard the electrification of the whole country as the primary task of industrialization; 3) maintain the state monopoly on foreign trade in order to protect domestic industry from foreign competition and use export earnings to finance high-priority imports. Political and state power was retained by the Communist Party.
"Price scissors". In the autumn of 1923, the first serious economic problems of the NEP began to emerge. Due to the rapid recovery of private agriculture and the lag of state industry, the prices of industrial products rose faster than those of agricultural goods (as represented graphically by divergent lines resembling open scissors in shape). This was bound to lead to a decline in agricultural production and lower prices for manufactured goods. Forty-six leading party members in Moscow published an open letter protesting against this line in economic policy. They believed that it was necessary to expand the market in every possible way by stimulating agricultural production.
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky. Statement 46 (soon to become known as the "Moscow Opposition") marked the beginning of a broad intra-party discussion that touched upon the foundations of the Marxist worldview. Its initiators, N.I. Bukharin and E.N. Preobrazhensky, in the past were friends and political associates (they were co-authors of the popular party textbook "The ABC of Communism"). Bukharin, who led the right-wing opposition, advocated a course towards slow and gradual industrialization. Preobrazhensky was one of the leaders of the left ("Trotskyist") opposition, who advocated accelerated industrialization. Bukharin assumed that the capital needed to finance industrial development would be the growing savings of the peasants. However, the vast majority of the peasants were still so poor that they lived mainly by subsistence farming, used all their meager cash income for its needs and had almost no savings. Only the kulaks sold enough meat and grain to afford them large savings. Grain, which was exported, brought money only for small imports of engineering products - especially after expensive consumer goods began to be imported for sale to wealthy townspeople and peasants. In 1925 the government allowed the kulaks to rent land from poor peasants and hire laborers. Bukharin and Stalin argued that if the peasants enrich themselves, the amount of grain for sale (which will increase exports) and cash deposits in the State Bank will increase. As a result, they believed, the country should industrialize, and the kulak should "grow into socialism." Preobrazhensky stated that a significant increase in industrial production would require large investments in new equipment. In other words, if no action is taken, production will become even more unprofitable due to equipment wear and tear, and overall production will decrease. To get out of the situation, the left opposition proposed to start accelerated industrialization and introduce a long-term state economic plan. The key question remained how to find the capital investment needed for rapid industrial growth. Preobrazhensky's response was a program he called "socialist accumulation." The state had to use its monopoly position (especially in the field of imports) to maximize prices. The progressive system of taxation was supposed to guarantee large cash receipts from the kulaks. Instead of lending preferentially to the richest (and therefore most creditworthy) peasants, the State Bank should give preference to cooperatives and collective farms made up of poor and middle peasants who can purchase agricultural equipment and rapidly increase crops by introducing modern farming methods.
International relationships. The question of the country's relations with the advanced industrial powers of the capitalist world was also of decisive importance. Stalin and Bukharin expected that the economic prosperity of the West, which began in the mid-1920s, would continue for a long period - this was the main premise for their theory of industrialization financed by ever-increasing grain exports. Trotsky and Preobrazhensky, for their part, assumed that in a few years this economic boom would end in a deep economic crisis. This assumption formed the basis of their theory of rapid industrialization, financed by the immediate large-scale export of raw materials at favorable prices - so that when the crisis breaks out, there was already an industrial base for the accelerated development of the country. Trotsky spoke in favor of attracting foreign investment ("concessions"), for which Lenin also spoke in his time. He hoped to use the contradictions between the imperialist powers to get out of the regime of international isolation in which the country found itself. The leadership of the party and the state saw the main threat in a probable war with Great Britain and France (as well as with their Eastern European allies - Poland and Romania). In order to protect themselves from such a threat, diplomatic relations with Germany were established even under Lenin (Rapallo, March 1922). Later, under a secret agreement with Germany, German officers were trained, and new types of weapons were tested for Germany. In turn, Germany provided the Soviet Union with substantial assistance in the construction of heavy industry enterprises intended for the production of military products.
End of the NEP. By the beginning of 1926, the freezing of wages in production, along with the growing well-being of party and state officials, private traders and wealthy peasants, caused discontent among the workers. The leaders of the Moscow and Leningrad party organizations L.B. Kamenev and G.I. Zinoviev, speaking out against Stalin, formed a united left opposition in a bloc with the Trotskyists. Stalin's bureaucracy easily dealt with the oppositionists, making an alliance with Bukharin and other moderates. The Bukharinites and Stalinists accused the Trotskyists of "excessive industrialization" by "exploiting" the peasantry, of undermining the economy and the union of workers and peasants. In 1927, in the absence of investment, the cost of manufacturing manufactured goods continued to rise and the standard of living declined. The growth of agricultural production was suspended due to a shortage of goods: the peasants were not interested in selling their agricultural products at low prices. In order to accelerate industrial development, the first five-year plan was developed and approved in December 1927 by the 15th Party Congress.
Bread riots. The winter of 1928 was the threshold of an economic crisis. Purchase prices for agricultural products were not increased, and the sale of grain to the state fell sharply. Then the state returned to the direct expropriation of grain. This affected not only the kulaks, but also the middle peasants. In response, the peasants reduced their crops, and grain exports practically ceased.
Turn left. The response of the state was a radical change in economic policy. To secure the resources for rapid growth, the party set about organizing the peasantry into a system of collective farms under state control.
Revolution from above. In May 1929 the party opposition was crushed. Trotsky was deported to Turkey; Bukharin, A.I. Rykov and M.P. Tomsky were removed from leadership positions; Zinoviev, Kamenev and other weaker oppositionists capitulated to Stalin by publicly renouncing their political views. In the autumn of 1929, immediately after the harvest, Stalin gave the order to begin the implementation of complete collectivization.
The collectivization of agriculture. By the beginning of November 1929, approx. 70 thousand collective farms, which included almost only poor or landless peasants, attracted by promises of state assistance. They made up 7% of the total number of all peasant families, and they owned less than 4% of cultivated land. Stalin set the party the task of accelerated collectivization of the entire agricultural sector. By a resolution of the Central Committee at the beginning of 1930, its deadline was set - by the autumn of 1930 in the main grain-producing regions, and by the autumn of 1931 - in the rest. At the same time, through the representatives and in the press, Stalin demanded that this process be accelerated, suppressing any resistance. In many areas, complete collectivization was already carried out by the spring of 1930. During the first two months of 1930, approx. 10 million peasant farms were united into collective farms. The poorest and landless peasants viewed collectivization as a division of the property of their richer countrymen. However, among the middle peasants and kulaks, collectivization caused massive resistance. Began widespread slaughter of livestock. By March, the number of cattle decreased by 14 million heads; large numbers of pigs, goats, sheep and horses were also slaughtered. In March 1930, in view of the threat of failure of the spring sowing campaign, Stalin demanded a temporary suspension of the collectivization process and accused local officials of "excesses." The peasants were even allowed to leave the collective farms, and by 1 July ca. 8 million families left the collective farms. But in the fall, after the harvest, the collectivization campaign resumed and did not stop thereafter. By 1933 more than three-fourths of cultivated land and more than three-fifths of peasant farms had been collectivized. All wealthy peasants were "dispossessed" by confiscating their property and crops. In cooperatives (collective farms), peasants had to supply the state with a fixed volume of products; payment was made depending on the labor contribution of each (the number of "workdays"). The purchase prices set by the state were extremely low, while the required supplies were high, sometimes exceeding the entire crop. However, collective farmers were allowed to have personal plots, 0.25-1.5 hectares in size, depending on the region of the country and the quality of the land, for their own use. These plots, the products from which were allowed to be sold on the collective farm markets, provided a significant part of the food for the city dwellers and fed the peasants themselves. There were far fewer farms of the second type, but they were given the best land and were better provided with agricultural equipment. These state farms were called state farms and functioned as industrial enterprises. Agricultural workers here received a salary in cash and did not have the right to a personal plot. It was obvious that the collectivized peasant farms would require a significant amount of equipment, especially tractors and combines. By organizing machine and tractor stations (MTS), the state created an effective means of control over collective peasant farms. Each MTS serviced a number of collective farms on a contractual basis for payment in cash or (mostly) in kind. In 1933, there were 1,857 MTSs in the RSFSR, which had 133,000 tractors and 18,816 combines, which cultivated 54.8% of the sown area of ​​collective farms.
Consequences of collectivization. The first five-year plan proposed to increase the volume of agricultural production from 1928 to 1933 by 50%. However, the collectivization campaign, which resumed in the autumn of 1930, was accompanied by a decline in production and the slaughter of livestock. By 1933, the total number of cattle in agriculture had fallen from more than 60 million heads to less than 34 million. The number of horses had decreased from 33 million to 17 million; pigs - from 19 million to 10 million; sheep - from 97 to 34 million; goats - from 10 to 3 million. Only in 1935, when tractor factories were built in Kharkov, Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk, the number of tractors became sufficient to restore the level of total draft power that peasant farms had in 1928. The total grain harvest, which in 1928 exceeded the level of 1913 and amounted to 76.5 million tons, by 1933 it decreased to 70 million tons, despite the increase in the area of ​​cultivated land. In general, the volume of agricultural production decreased from 1928 to 1933 by approximately 20%. The consequence of rapid industrialization was a significant increase in the number of citizens, which caused the need for a strictly rationed distribution of food. The situation was aggravated by the world economic crisis that began in 1929. By 1930, grain prices on the world market had fallen sharply - just when a large amount of industrial equipment had to be imported, not to mention the tractors and combines necessary for agriculture (mainly from USA and Germany). To pay for imports, it was necessary to export grain in huge quantities. In 1930, 10% of the collected grain was exported, and in 1931 - 14%. The result of the export of grain and collectivization was famine. The situation was worst in the Volga region and in the Ukraine, where the resistance of the peasants to collectivization was the strongest. In the winter of 1932-1933, more than 5 million people died of starvation, but even more of them were sent into exile. By 1934 violence and famine finally broke the resistance of the peasants. The forced collectivization of agriculture led to fatal consequences. Peasants no longer feel like masters of the land. Significant and irreparable damage to the culture of management was caused by the destruction of the prosperous, i.e. the most skillful and industrious peasantry. Despite the mechanization and expansion of sown areas through the development of new lands in the virgin lands and in other areas, the growth of purchase prices and the introduction of pensions and other social benefits to collective farmers, labor productivity on collective farms and state farms lagged far behind the level that existed on personal plots and more in the West, and gross agricultural production increasingly lagged behind population growth. Due to the lack of incentives for work, agricultural machinery and equipment of collective and state farms were usually kept in poor condition, seeds and fertilizers were used wastefully, and harvest losses were huge. Since the 1970s, despite the fact that approx. 20% of the labor force (less than 4% in the US and Western Europe), the Soviet Union became the world's largest grain importer.
Five year plans. The justification for the costs of collectivization was the construction of a new society in the USSR. This goal undoubtedly aroused the enthusiasm of many millions of people, especially the generation that grew up after the revolution. During the 1920s and 1930s, millions of young people found in education and party work the key to moving up the social ladder. With the help of the mobilization of the masses, an unprecedented rapid growth of industry was achieved just at the time when the West was going through the most acute economic crisis. During the first five-year plan (1928-1933), approx. 1,500 large factories, including metallurgical plants in Magnitogorsk and Novokuznetsk; agricultural engineering and tractor plants in Rostov-on-Don, Chelyabinsk, Stalingrad, Saratov and Kharkov; chemical plants in the Urals and a heavy engineering plant in Kramatorsk. In the Urals and the Volga region, new centers of oil production, metal production and weapons production arose. The construction of new railways and canals began, in which the forced labor of dispossessed peasants played an ever-increasing role. Results of the implementation of the first five-year plan. During the accelerated implementation of the second and third five-year plans (1933-1941), many mistakes made in the implementation of the first plan were taken into account and corrected. During this period of mass repression, the systematic use of forced labor under the control of the NKVD became an important part of the economy, especially in the timber and gold mining industries, as well as in new buildings in Siberia and the Far North. The system of economic planning in the form in which it was created in the 1930s lasted without fundamental changes until the late 1980s. The essence of the system was planning, carried out by the bureaucratic hierarchy using command methods. At the top of the hierarchy were the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which led the highest economic decision-making body - the State Planning Committee (Gosplan). More than 30 ministries were subordinate to the State Planning Commission, subdivided into "main departments" responsible for specific types of production, united in one branch. At the base of this production pyramid were the primary production units - plants and factories, collective and state agricultural enterprises, mines, warehouses, etc. Each of these units was responsible for the implementation of a specific part of the plan, determined (based on the volume and cost of production or turnover) by higher-level authorities, and received its own planned quota of resources. This pattern was repeated at every level of the hierarchy. The central planning agencies set target figures in accordance with a system of so-called "material balances". Each production unit at each level of the hierarchy negotiated with a higher authority about what its plans would be for the coming year. In practice, this meant a shake-up of the plan: all the lower ones wanted to do the minimum and get the maximum, while all the higher authorities wanted to get as much as possible and give as little as possible. From the compromises reached, a "balanced" overall plan was formed.
The role of money. The control figures of plans were presented in physical units (tons of oil, pairs of shoes, etc.), but money also played an important, albeit subordinate, role in the planning process. With the exception of periods of extreme shortages (1930-1935, 1941-1947), when basic consumer goods were distributed by cards, all goods usually went on sale. Money was also a means for non-cash payments - it was assumed that each enterprise should minimize the cash costs of production so as to be conditionally profitable, and the State Bank should allocate limits for each enterprise. All prices were tightly controlled; Thus, money was assigned an exclusively passive economic role as a means of accounting and a method of rationing consumption.
The victory of socialism. At the 7th Congress of the Comintern in August 1935, Stalin declared that "the complete and final victory of socialism has been achieved in the Soviet Union." This statement - that the Soviet Union has built a socialist society - has become an unshakable dogma of the Soviet ideology.
Great terror. Having dealt with the peasantry, taking control of the working class and educating an obedient intelligentsia, Stalin and his supporters, under the slogan of "aggravating the class struggle," began to purge the party. After December 1, 1934 (on this day, S.M. Kirov, secretary of the party organization of Leningrad, was killed by Stalin's agents), several political trials were held, and then almost all the old party cadres were destroyed. With the help of documents fabricated by the German secret services, many representatives of the high command of the Red Army were repressed. For 5 years, more than 5 million people were shot or sent to forced labor in the camps of the NKVD.
Post-war recovery. The Second World War led to devastation in the western regions of the Soviet Union, but accelerated the industrial growth of the Ural-Siberian region. The industrial base after the war was quickly restored: this was facilitated by the export of industrial equipment from East Germany and Manchuria, occupied by Soviet troops. In addition, the Gulag camps again received multimillion-dollar replenishment from German prisoners of war and former Soviet prisoners of war accused of treason. Heavy and military industries remained top priorities. Particular attention was paid to the development of nuclear energy, primarily for weapons purposes. The pre-war level of food supplies and consumer goods was already reached in the early 1950s.
Khrushchev's reforms. The death of Stalin in March 1953 put an end to the terror and repressions, which were gaining more and more scope, reminiscent of pre-war times. The softening of party policy during the leadership of N.S. Khrushchev, from 1955 to 1964, was called the "thaw". Millions of political prisoners returned from the Gulag camps; most of them have been rehabilitated. Significantly more attention in the five-year plans began to be given to the production of consumer goods and housing construction. The volume of agricultural production increased; wages rose, compulsory deliveries and taxes decreased. In order to increase profitability, collective farms and state farms were consolidated and subdivided, sometimes without much success. Large large state farms were created during the development of virgin and fallow lands in Altai and Kazakhstan. These lands produced crops only in years with sufficient rainfall, about three out of every five years, but they allowed a significant increase in the average amount of grain harvested. The MTS system was abolished, and the collective farms received their own agricultural machinery. Hydroelectric, oil and gas resources of Siberia were mastered; large scientific and industrial centers arose there. Many young people went to the virgin lands and construction sites of Siberia, where the bureaucratic order was relatively less rigid than in the European part of the country. Khrushchev's attempts to accelerate economic development soon ran into resistance from the administrative apparatus. Khrushchev tried to decentralize ministries by transferring many of their functions to new regional economic councils (sovnarkhozes). There has been a heated discussion among economists about developing a more realistic price system and giving real autonomy to industrial directors. Khrushchev intended to carry out a significant reduction in military spending, which followed from the doctrine of "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist world. In October 1964, Khrushchev was ousted from his post by a coalition of conservative party bureaucrats, representatives of the central planning apparatus and the Soviet military-industrial complex.
Stagnation period. The new Soviet leader L.I. Brezhnev quickly nullified Khrushchev's reforms. With the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he destroyed any hope for the countries of Eastern Europe with centralized economies to develop their own models of society. The only area of ​​rapid technological progress was the military industry - the production of submarines, missiles, aircraft, military electronics, and the space program. The production of consumer goods, as before, was not given much attention. Large-scale reclamation has led to catastrophic consequences for the environment and public health. For example, the price of introducing cotton monoculture in Uzbekistan was the deep shallowing of the Aral Sea, which until 1973 was the fourth largest inland water body in the world.
Economic slowdown. During the leadership of Brezhnev and his immediate successors, the development of the Soviet economy slowed down extremely. Yet the bulk of the population could count on small but secure wages, pensions and benefits, price controls on basic consumer goods, free education and health care, and virtually free, though always scarce, housing. To maintain minimum living standards, large quantities of grain and various consumer goods were imported from the West. Since the main Soviet exports—mainly oil, gas, timber, gold, diamonds, and armaments—provided insufficient hard currency, Soviet external debt reached $6 billion by 1976 and continued to grow rapidly.
The period of collapse. In 1985 MS Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He took this post fully aware of the need for radical economic reforms, which he launched under the slogan of "perestroika and acceleration." To increase labor productivity - i.e. to use the fastest way to ensure economic growth - he authorized an increase in wages and limited the sale of vodka in the hope of stopping the general drunkenness of the population. However, the proceeds from the sale of vodka were the main source of state income. The loss of this income and higher wages increased the budget deficit and increased inflation. In addition, the prohibition of the sale of vodka revived the underground trade in moonshine; drug use has skyrocketed. In 1986, the economy experienced a terrible shock after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which led to radioactive contamination of large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Until 1989-1990, the economy of the Soviet Union was closely linked through the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) with the economies of Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hungary, Romania, Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam. For all these countries, the USSR was the main source of oil, gas and industrial raw materials, and in return it received from them engineering products, consumer goods and agricultural products. The reunification of Germany in mid-1990 led to the destruction of the CMEA. By August 1990, everyone already understood that radical reforms aimed at encouraging private initiative were inevitable. Gorbachev and his main political opponent, President of the RSFSR B.N. Yeltsin, jointly put forward the 500-day structural reform program developed by economists S.S. Shatalin and G.A. Yavlinsky, which involved the release from state control and privatization of most national economy in an organized manner, without reducing the standard of living of the population. However, in order to avoid a confrontation with the apparatus of the central planning system, Gorbachev refused to discuss the program and its implementation in practice. In early 1991, the government tried to contain inflation by limiting the money supply, but the huge budget deficit continued to widen as the union republics refused to transfer taxes to the center. At the end of June 1991, Gorbachev and the presidents of most of the republics agreed to conclude a union treaty in order to preserve the USSR, endowing the republics with new rights and powers. But the economy was already in a hopeless state. The amount of external debt was approaching $70 billion, output was declining by almost 20% a year, and inflation rates exceeded 100% a year. The emigration of qualified specialists exceeded 100 thousand people a year. In order to save the economy, the Soviet leadership, in addition to reforms, needed serious financial assistance from the Western powers. At a July meeting of the leaders of the seven leading industrialized countries, Gorbachev appealed to them for help, but did not find a response.
CULTURE
The leadership of the USSR attached great importance to the formation of a new, Soviet culture - "national in form, socialist in content." It was assumed that the ministries of culture at the union and republican levels should subordinate the development of national culture to the same ideological and political guidelines that dominated all sectors of economic and social life. This task was not easy to cope with in a multinational state with more than 100 languages. Having created national-state formations for the majority of the peoples of the country, the party leadership stimulated the development of national cultures in the right direction; in 1977, for example, 2,500 books were published in Georgian with a circulation of 17.7 million copies. and 2,200 books in Uzbek with a circulation of 35.7 million copies. A similar state of affairs was in other union and autonomous republics. Due to the lack of cultural traditions, most of the books were translations from other languages, mainly from Russian. The task of the Soviet regime in the field of culture after October was understood differently by the two rival groups of ideologists. The first, which considered itself the pioneers of a general and complete renewal of life, demanded a decisive break with the culture of the "old world" and the creation of a new, proletarian culture. The most prominent herald of ideological and artistic innovation was the futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), one of the leaders of the avant-garde literary group "Left Front" (LEF). Their opponents, who were called "fellow travelers", believed that the ideological renewal did not contradict the continuation of the advanced traditions of Russian and world culture. The inspirer of supporters of proletarian culture and at the same time the mentor of "fellow travelers" was the writer Maxim Gorky (A.M. Peshkov, 1868-1936), who gained fame in pre-revolutionary Russia. In the 1930s, the party and the state strengthened their control over literature and art by creating unified union-wide creative organizations. After Stalin's death in 1953, a cautious and increasingly in-depth analysis began of what had been done under the Soviet regime to strengthen and develop Bolshevik cultural ideas, and the subsequent decade witnessed a ferment in all spheres of Soviet life. The names and works of the victims of ideological and political repressions have come out of total oblivion, and the influence of foreign literature has increased. Soviet culture began to revive during the period generally called the "thaw" (1954-1956). Two groups of cultural figures arose - "liberals" and "conservatives" - which were presented in various official publications.
Education. The Soviet leadership paid much attention and funds to education. In a country where more than two-thirds of the population could not read, illiteracy was virtually eradicated by the 1930s through several mass campaigns. In 1966, 80.3 million people, or 34% of the population, had a secondary specialized, incomplete or completed higher education; if in 1914 there were 10.5 million people studying in Russia, then in 1967, when universal compulsory secondary education was introduced, - 73.6 million. In 1989 in the USSR there were 17.2 million pupils of nurseries and kindergartens, 39, 7 million primary and 9.8 million secondary school students. Depending on the decisions of the country's leadership, boys and girls studied in secondary schools either together, or separately, or for 10 years, or 11. The team of schoolchildren, almost entirely covered by the pioneer and Komsomol organizations, had to control the progress and behavior of everyone in every possible way. In 1989, there were 5.2 million full-time students in Soviet universities and several million students studying in correspondence or evening departments. The first academic degree after graduation was the degree of Candidate of Sciences. To obtain it, it was necessary to have a higher education, acquire some work experience or complete graduate school and defend a dissertation in your specialty. The highest scientific degree, Doctor of Science, was usually achieved only after 15-20 years of professional work and in the presence of a large number of published scientific papers.
Science and academic institutions. Significant progress has been made in the Soviet Union in certain natural sciences and in military technology. This happened despite the ideological pressure of the party bureaucracy, which banned and abolished entire branches of science, such as cybernetics and genetics. After the Second World War, the state directed the best minds to the development of nuclear physics and applied mathematics and their practical applications. Physicists and space rocket scientists could rely on generous financial support for their work. Russia has traditionally produced excellent theoretical scientists, and this tradition continued in the Soviet Union. Intensive and versatile research activity was provided by a network of research institutes that were part of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Academies of the Union Republics, covering all areas of knowledge - both natural sciences and the humanities.
Traditions and holidays. One of the first tasks of the Soviet leadership was the elimination of old holidays, mainly church holidays, and the introduction of revolutionary holidays. At first, even Sunday and New Year's were cancelled. The main Soviet revolutionary holidays were November 7 - the holiday of the October Revolution of 1917 and May 1 - the day of international solidarity of workers. Both of them were celebrated for two days. Mass demonstrations were organized in all cities of the country, and military parades were held in large administrative centers; the largest and most impressive was the parade in Moscow on Red Square. See below

Russians harness for a long time, but they go fast

Winston Churchill

The USSR (the union of Soviet socialist republics) this form of statehood replaced the Russian Empire. The country began to be ruled by the proletariat, which achieved this right by carrying out the October Revolution, which was nothing more than an armed coup within the country, bogged down in its internal and external problems. Not the last role in this state of affairs was played by Nicholas 2, who actually drove the country into a state of collapse.

Country Education

The formation of the USSR took place on November 7, 1917 in a new style. It was on this day that the October Revolution took place, which overthrew the Provisional Government and the fruits of the February Revolution, proclaiming the slogan that power should belong to the workers. This is how the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was formed. It is extremely difficult to unambiguously assess the Soviet period in the history of Russia, since it was very controversial. Without a doubt, we can say that at this time there were both positive and negative moments.

Capital Cities

Initially, the capital of the USSR was Petrograd, in which the revolution actually took place, which brought the Bolsheviks to power. At first, there was no question of moving the capital, since the new government was too weak, but later this decision was made. As a result, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was moved to Moscow. This is quite symbolic, since the creation of the Empire was due to the transfer of the capital to Petrograd from Moscow.

The fact of the transfer of the capital to Moscow today is associated with the economy, politics, symbolism and much more. In fact, everything is much simpler. By moving the capital, the Bolsheviks saved themselves from other contenders for power in a civil war.

Country leaders

The foundations of the power and prosperity of the USSR are connected with the fact that there was relative stability in the leadership in the country. There was a clear single line of the party, and leaders who had been at the head of the state for a long time. It is interesting that the closer the country came to collapse, the more often the General Secretaries changed. In the early 1980s, leapfrog began: Andropov, Ustinov, Chernenko, Gorbachev - the country did not have time to get used to one leader, when another appeared in his place.

The general list of leaders is as follows:

• Lenin. Leader of the world proletariat. One of the ideological inspirers and implementers of the October Revolution. Laid the foundations of the state.
• Stalin. One of the most controversial historical figures. With all the negativity that the liberal press pours on this person, the fact is that Stalin raised industry from its knees, Stalin prepared the USSR for war, Stalin began to actively develop a socialist state.
• Khrushchev. Gained power after the assassination of Stalin, developed the country and managed to adequately resist the United States in the Cold War.
• Brezhnev. The era of his reign is called the era of stagnation. Many mistakenly associate this with the economy, but there was no stagnation there - all indicators were growing. There was stagnation in the party, which was decaying.
• Andropov, Chernenko. They didn't really do anything, they pushed the country to collapse.
• Gorbachev. The first and last president of the USSR. Today they hang all the dogs on him, accusing him of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but his main fault was that he was afraid to take active steps against Yeltsin and his supporters, who actually staged a conspiracy and a coup d'état.

Another fact is also interesting - the best rulers were those who found the time of revolution and war. The same applies to party leaders. These people understood the value of the socialist state, the significance and complexity of its existence. As soon as people came to power who had not seen a war, much less a revolution, everything went to pieces.

Formation and achievements

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began its formation with the Red Terror. This is a sad page in the history of Russia, a huge number of people were killed by the Bolsheviks, who sought to strengthen their power. The leaders of the Bolshevik Party, realizing that they could only retain power by force, killed everyone who could somehow interfere with the formation of the new regime. It is outrageous that the Bolsheviks, as the first people's commissars and people's police, i.e. those people who were supposed to keep order were recruited by thieves, murderers, homeless people, etc. In a word, all those who were objectionable in the Russian Empire and tried in every possible way to take revenge on everyone who was somehow connected with it. The apogee of these atrocities was the murder of the royal family.

After the formation of the new system, the USSR, headed until 1924 Lenin V.I. got a new leader. They became Joseph Stalin. His control became possible after he won the power struggle with Trotsky. During the reign of Stalin, industry and agriculture began to develop at a tremendous pace. Knowing about the growing power of Nazi Germany, Stalin pays great attention to the development of the country's defense complex. In the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was involved in a bloody war with Germany, from which it emerged victorious. The Great Patriotic War cost the Soviet state millions of lives, but this was the only way to preserve the freedom and independence of the country. The post-war years were difficult for the country: hunger, poverty and rampant banditry. Stalin brought order to the country with a hard hand.

International Position

After the death of Stalin and until the collapse of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics developed dynamically, overcoming a huge number of difficulties and obstacles. The USSR was involved in the US arms race, which continues to this day. It was this race that could become fatal for all mankind, since both countries were in constant confrontation as a result. This period of history is known as the Cold War. Only the prudence of the leadership of both countries managed to keep the planet from a new war. And this war, taking into account the fact that both nations were already nuclear at that time, could become fatal for the whole world.

The space program of the country stands apart from the entire development of the USSR. It was the Soviet citizen who first flew into space. It was Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. The United States responded to this manned space flight with its first manned flight to the moon. But the Soviet flight into space, unlike the American flight to the moon, does not raise so many questions, and experts have not a shadow of a doubt that this flight really took place.

Population of the country

Every decade the Soviet country showed population growth. And this despite the multimillion-dollar victims of the Second World War. The key to increasing the birth rate was the social guarantees of the state. The diagram below shows data on the population of the USSR as a whole and the RSFSR in particular.

You should also pay attention to the dynamics of urban development. The Soviet Union was becoming an industrial, industrial country, the population of which gradually moved from the countryside to the cities.

By the time the USSR was formed, there were 2 million-plus cities in Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg). By the time the country collapsed, there were already 12 such cities: Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa and Perm. The union republics also had cities with a million inhabitants: Kyiv, Tashkent, Baku, Kharkov, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Donetsk.

USSR map

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991, when the leaders of the Soviet republics announced their secession from the USSR in the white forest. Thus, all the Republics gained independence and self-sufficiency. The opinion of the Soviet people was not taken into account. The referendum, held just before the collapse of the USSR, showed that the vast majority of people declared that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics should be preserved. A handful of people, headed by the chairman of the Central Committee of the CPSU, MS Gorbachev, decided the fate of the country and the people. It was this decision that plunged Russia into the harsh reality of the "nineties". This is how the Russian Federation was born. Below is a map of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Economy

The economy of the USSR was unique. For the first time, a system was demonstrated to the world in which the focus was not on profit, but on public goods and employee incentives. In general, the economy of the Soviet Union can be divided into 3 stages:

1. Before Stalin. We are not talking about any economy here - the revolution has just died down in the country, there is a war going on. No one seriously thought about economic development, the Bolsheviks held power.
2. Stalinist model of the economy. Stalin implemented a unique idea of ​​the economy, which made it possible to raise the USSR to the level of the leading countries of the world. The essence of his approach is total labor and the correct “pyramid of distribution of funds”. Proper distribution of funds - when workers receive no less than managers. Moreover, the basis of the salary was bonuses for achieving results and bonuses for innovation. The essence of such bonuses is as follows - 90% was received by the employee himself, and 10% was divided between the team, shop, and bosses. But the worker himself received the main money. Therefore, there was a desire to work.
3. After Stalin. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev reversed the pyramid of the economy, after which a recession began and a gradual drop in growth rates. Under Khrushchev and after him, an almost capitalist model was formed, when managers received much more workers, especially in the form of bonuses. Bonuses were now divided differently: 90% for the boss and 10% for everyone else.

The Soviet economy is unique because before the war it actually managed to rise from the ashes after the civil war and revolution, and this happened in just 10-12 years. Therefore, when today economists from different countries and journalists say that it is impossible to change the economy in 1 election term (5 years), they simply do not know history. Two Stalinist five-year plans turned the USSR into a modern power, which had a foundation for development. Moreover, the basis for all this was laid in 2-3 years of the first five-year plan.

I also suggest looking at the chart below, which presents data on the average annual growth of the economy as a percentage. Everything we talked about above is reflected in this diagram.

Union republics

The new period of the country's development was due to the fact that several republics existed within the framework of a single state of the USSR. Thus, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had the following composition: Russian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Tajik SSR, Armenian SSR, Turkmen SSR, Estonian SSR.