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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Союз Советских Социалистических Республик
Timeline: Nihon no heiwa
OTL equivalent: Soviet Union excluding parts of Poland, Slovakia, Finland, Moldova and Southern Sahkalin but including Mongolia and Xinjiang
Alternate flag of the Soviet Union State Emblem of the Soviet Union
Flag Emblem
Motto: 
Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!
"Workers of the world, unite!"
Anthem: 
Рабочая Марсельеза
"Worker's Marseillaise"
Location of the Soviet Union (Nihon no heiwa)
Soviet Union (green)
CapitalMoscow
Official languages None at a federal level
Regional languages Russian • Ukrainian • Belarusian • Uzbek • Kazakh • Georgian • Azerbaijani • Kyrgyz • Tajik • Armenian • Turkmen • Uyghur • Mongolian • Crimean Tatar • Tuvan
Demonym Soviet
Government Federal Marxist–Leninist one-party directorial parliamentary socialist republic
 -  Leader Gennady Zyuganov
 -  Premier Vladimir Bryntsalov
Legislature Supreme Soviet
 -  Upper house Soviet of Nationalities
 -  Lower house Soviet of the Union
Formation
 -  October Revolution 7 November 1917 
 -  Treaty of Creation 30 December 1922 
 -  Current constitution 5 December 1936 
 -  Admitted to the U.N. 24 October 1945 
Population
 -  2022 estimate 301,575,320 
Currency Soviet ruble (руб) (SUR)
Drives on the Right

The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик), is a transcontinental country spanning most of Eurasia. It is a federation consisting of twenty constituent republics. The Soviet Union shares borders with Romania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway to the west; and Türkiye, North Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet, China, Manchuria and Japan to the south; it also shares overseas borders with the United States to the east. It is the world's largest country, and the third most populous country.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The medieval state of Kievan Rus' arose in the 9th century. In 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Rus' ultimately disintegrated, and among its principalities, the Grand Duchy of Moscow rose. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to evolve into the Russian Empire, the third-largest empire in history. In 1917, after years of unsuccessful attacks against the German Empire during World War I, the monarchy was overthrown and replaced with the failed Russian Republic. Vladimir Lenin along with the other Bolsheviks staged a coup in November, and established the Russian SFSR. However, despite having a hold on power in Petrograd (then later Moscow from 1918 onwards), the Russian SFSR had to fight the Russian Whites in a major civil war. The Red Army expanded and helped local Bolsheviks take power, establishing soviets, repressing their political opponents and rebellious peasants through Red Terror.

By 1922, the balance of power had shifted and the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious, forming the modern Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. Upon the conclusion of the civil war Lenin's government introduced the New Economic Policy, which led to a partial return of a free market and private property; this resulted in a period of economic recovery. After Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, ruling with dictatorial powers and murdering anyone who was suspected of being an enemy of the state. After the Allied victory in World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged into a cold war with each other, politically fighting for influence in the world. After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev ordered a new period of de-stalinization in 1956. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, under Andrei Gromyko, a bunch of economic reforms were made to allow small capitalist enterprises to secure the economy.

The Soviet Union is a recognised superpower. It is ranked 41st on the Human Development Index, with a universal healthcare system and free university education. The Soviet Union's economy is the world's second-largest by nominal GDP and the third-largest by GDP (PPP). It is a recognized nuclear-weapons state, possessing the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, with the second-most powerful military and the second-highest military expenditure. The Soviet Union's extensive mineral and energy resources are the world's largest, and it is among the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as the leading member of the Moscow Treaty Organisation.

History[]

Revolutionary activity (1917-1921)[]

In November 1917, Russian communist Vladimir Lenin and the other Bolsheviks lead a coup against the democratic Russian government due to multiple people despising the new government, especially with the fact that it continued fighting against Britain and its allies. After the coup, a major civil war broke out as opposition forces such as the Mensheviks and the Russian White army tried to gain back control of Russia. Other communist republics sided with Communist Russia during the war - Belarus, the Transcaucasian republics and Finland, which had its own brief civil war.

When it became inevitable that the communists would win, Lenin along with the leaders of the other Soviet republics began organising a communist union of all the republics. On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the first Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations, Mikhail Kalinin, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Alexander Chervyakov, on 30 December 1922. The formal proclamation was made from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.

An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931. After the economic policy of "War communism" during the Russian Civil War, as a prelude to fully developing socialism in the country, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s, and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax.

From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The stated purpose was to prevent the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. The debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR, Lev Kamenev of the Russian SFSR, and Joseph Stalin of the Transcaucasian SFSR.

On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the United Kingdom. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.

Early Stalin era (1924-1941)[]

Joseph-Stalin

Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union (1924-1953)

On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmaneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the country and, by the end of the 1920s, established a totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the "lead by example" policy advocated by Lenin, forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country. Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the country developed a robust industrial economy in the years preceding World War II.

Closer cooperation between the USSR and the West developed in the early 1930s. From 1932 to 1934, the country participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established when in November, the newly elected President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to recognize Stalin's Communist government formally and negotiated a new trade agreement between the two countries. In September 1934, the country joined the League of Nations, also bringing the issue of the status of Crimea. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists, who were supported by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and China.

In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new constitution that was praised by supporters around the world as the most democratic constitution imaginable, though there was some skepticism. Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the detainment or execution of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. According to declassified Soviet archives, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people in 1937 and 1938, of whom 681,692 were shot. Over those two years, there were an average of over one thousand executions a day.

In 1939, after attempts to form a military alliance with Britain and France against Germany failed, the Soviet Union made a dramatic shift towards Nazi Germany. Almost a year after Britain and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union made agreements with Germany as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks. The two countries concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement in August 1939. The former made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland, while the Soviets remained formally neutral. In late November, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad, Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland - as a result, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations on 14 December 1939. In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Nationalist government of China from 1938 through until war broke out in 1941.

World War II (1941-1945)[]

Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 starting what was known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War. China also invaded the Soviet Union along with its allies, Tuva and Mongolia. The Red Army stopped the seemingly invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to Germany from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point in the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front. Harry Hopkins, a close foreign policy advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke on 10 August 1943 of the USSR's decisive role in the war.

Meanwhile, on the Asian front, Soviet forces in the east managed to reorganise themselves in multiple divisions, pushing back attacking Chinese forces. The Red Army soon liberated Tuva and Mongolia by early 1944, and began the long push into China, helping East Turkestani communist revolutionaries establish an independent East Turkestan state, eventually meeting up with British and Indian forces near the Tarim River in January 1945, while in Manchuria, Soviet forces caught up with Japanese and Korean soldiers in February 1945. Eventually, the Red Army arrived in Nanjing, where a long battle ensured, although the allies emerged victorious, as the Chinese nationalist government officially surrendered on 17 October 1945.

The USSR suffered greatly in the war, losing around 27 million people. Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42. During the war, the country together with the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan were considered the Big Four Allied powers, and later became the Four Policemen that formed the basis of the United Nations Security Council. It emerged as a superpower in the post-war period. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the USSR had official relations with practically every country by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the country became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions.

Final years of Stalin (1945-1953)[]

De-Stalinization (1953-1971)[]

Politics[]

Government[]

Republics[]

Economy[]

Culture[]

Traditions[]

Entertainment[]