Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Союз Советских Социалистических Республик
1922–1991
Flag (1936–1955) Coat of arms
Motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! Workers of the world, unite!
Anthem: Государственный гимн СССР ("State Anthem of the Soviet Union")
Capital and largest city	Moscow
Official languages	None (1922–1990) Russian (1990–1991)
Mode of production	Socialism (1928–1955) Capitalism (1956–1991)
Government	Federal Marxist–Leninist Soviet socialist republic (until 1956)
• Notable leaderships	Vladimir Lenin (1922–1924) Joseph Stalin (1924–1953)
History
• October Revolution	1917 November 7th
• Establishment of the USSR	1922 December 30th
• World War II victory	1945 May 9th
• Counter-revolution	1953–1957
• Dissolution	1991 December 26th
Population
• 1989 estimate	285,742,511

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union was a socialist state that existed from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was founded in 1922 following the Great October Socialist Revolution and was the first state to achieve socialism. However, it fell to revisionism in the 1950s.

History

Background

Russian Empire

Main article: Russian Empire

In 1861, the Russian Empire, also known as Tsarist Russia, abolished serfdom. However, the situation for peasants "remained almost the same as it had been under serfdom, the only difference being that the peasant was now personally free, could not be bought and sold like a chattel." These conditions led to the labor movement in Russia growing, as capitalism had recently been established. In 1903, the Russian Social–Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was formed. However, a counter-revolutionary trend began to arise in the RSDLP.

This trend was known as Menshevism, and was led by Julius Martov.

According to Lenin's formulation, one could be a member of the Party who accepted its program, supported it financially, and belonged to one of its organizations. Martov's formulation, while admitting that acceptance of the program and financial support of the Party were indispensable conditions of Party membership, did not, however, make it a condition that a Party member should belong to one of the Party organizations, maintaining that a Party member need not necessarily belong to a Party organization.

Lenin regarded the Party as an organized detachment, whose members cannot just enroll themselves in the Party, but must be admitted into the Party by one of its organizations, and hence must submit to Party discipline. Martov, on the other hand, regarded the Party as something organizationally amorphous, whose members enroll themselves in the Party and are therefore not obliged to submit to Party discipline, inasmuch as they do not belong to a Party organization.

Thus, unlike Lenin's formulation, Martov's formulation would throw the door of the Party wide open to unstable non-proletarian elements. On the eve of the bourgeois-democratic revolution there were people among the bourgeois intelligentsia who for a while sympathized with the revolution. From time to time they might even render some small service to the Party. But such people would not join an organization, submit to Party discipline, carry out Party tasks and run the accompanying risks. Yet Martov and the other Mensheviks proposed to regard such people as Party members, and to accord them the right and opportunity to influence Party affairs.

…as we proceed with the building of a real party, the class-conscious worker must learn to distinguish the mentality of the soldier of the proletarian army from the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual who parades anarchistic phrases; he must learn to insist that the duties of a Party member be fulfilled not only by the rank and file, but by the “people at the top” as well; he must learn to treat tail-ism in matters of organisation with the same contempt as he used, in days gone by, to treat tail-ism in matters of tactics!

In 1903, the Mensheviks showed their capacity for splitting behavior by using the newspaper for it:

On Lenin's proposal, Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov were elected to the editorial board of Iskra. Martov had demanded the election of all the six former members of the Iskra editorial board, the majority of whom were Martov's followers. This demand was rejected by the majority of the congress. The three proposed by Lenin were elected. Martov thereupon announced that he would not join the editorial board of the central organ.

In 1905, a bourgeois revolution swept in Russia, and the Tsar, afraid for his autocracy, wrote a manifesto claiming that he supported basic "democratic" rights. This quelled the masses a bit, but still many did not believe his lies.

Lenin regarded the Manifesto of October 17 as an expression of a certain temporary equilibrium of forces: the proletariat and the peasantry, having wrung the Manifesto from the tsar, were still not strong enough to overthrow tsardom, whereas tsardom was no longer able to rule by the old methods alone and had been compelled to give a paper promise of "civil liberties" and a "legislative" Duma.

However, the revolution died down, and the abolition of tsardom still did not occur. This was until, of course, Russia entered an imperialist war with Germany.

On July 14 (27, New Style), 1914, the tsarist government proclaimed a general mobilization. On July 19 (August 1, New Style) Germany declared war on Russia.

Russia entered the war.

Long before the actual outbreak of the war the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, had foreseen that it was inevitable. At international Socialist congresses Lenin had put forward proposals the purpose of which was to determine a revolutionary line of conduct for the Socialists in the event of war.

Lenin had pointed out that war is an inevitable concomitant of capitalism. Plunder of foreign territory, seizure and spoliation of colonies and the capture of new markets had many times already served as causes of wars of conquest waged by capitalist states. For capitalist countries war is just as natural and legitimate a condition of things as the exploitation of the working class.

Wars became inevitable particularly when, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism definitely entered the highest and last stage of its development—imperialism. Under imperialism the powerful capitalist associations (monopolies) and the banks acquired a dominant position in the life of the capitalist states. Finance capital became master in the capitalist states. Finance capital demanded new markets, the seizure of new colonies, new fields for the export of capital, new sources of raw material.

The growing anger about the war and distrust of the Tsarists led to the February Bourgeois–Democratic Revolution, establishing the provisional government.

Provisional Government

Main article: Russian Provisional Government

In 12 March 1917, the provisional government was formed. The workers originally held high confidence in it, but this began to wane when the provisional government did not end the war.

While the workers and peasants who were shedding their blood making the revolution expected that the war would be terminated, while they were fighting for bread and land and demanding vigorous measures to end the economic chaos, the Provisional Government remained deaf to these vital demands of the people. Consisting as it did of prominent representatives of the capitalists and landlords, this government had no intention of satisfying the demand of the peasants that the land be turned over to them. Nor could they provide bread for the working people, because to do so they would have to encroach on the interests of the big grain dealers and to take grain from the landlords and the kulaks by every available means; and this the government did not dare to do, for it was itself tied up with the interests of these classes. Nor could it give the people peace. Bound as it was to the British and French imperialists, the Provisional Government had no intention of terminating the war; on the contrary, it endeavoured to take advantage of the revolution to make Russia's participation in the imperialist war even more active, and to realize its imperialist designs of seizing Constantinople, the Straits and Galicia. It was clear that the people's confidence in the policy of the Provisional Government must soon come to an end.

And it did. The demonstration of 4 July fought against the bourgeois democrats and campaigned for the end of the war. However, the counter-revolutionary provisional government massacred the peaceful demonstrators of the revolution. At the same time, they put out an arrest warrant on Lenin and raided the offices of Pravda, killing one person.

The Pravda premises were wrecked. Pravda, Soldatskaya Pravda (Soldiers' Truth) and a number of other Bolshevik newspapers were suppressed. A worker named Voinov was killed by cadets in the street merely for selling Listok Pravdy (Pravda Bulletin). Disarming of the Red Guards began. Revolutionary units of the Petrograd garrison were withdrawn from the capital and dispatched to the trenches. Arrests were carried out in the rear and at the front. On July 7 a warrant was issued for Lenin's arrest. A number of prominent members of the Bolshevik Party were arrested.

However, this was not enough to stop the spread of proletarian power:

In the interval from October 1917 to February 1918 the Soviet revolution spread throughout the vast territory of the country at such a rapid rate that Lenin referred to it as a "triumphal march" of Soviet power. The Great October Socialist Revolution had won.

This established the RSFSR.

RSFSR

Main article: Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic

Near the beginning of the RSFSR's existence, foreign imperialist powers intervened and attempted to destroy it.

The conditions of the struggle against the Soviet power dictated a union of the two anti-Soviet forces, foreign and domestic. And this union was effected in the first half of 1918.

This was how the foreign military intervention against the Soviet power supported by counter-revolutionary revolts of its foes at home originated.

This was the end of the respite in Russia and the beginning of the Civil War, which was a war of the workers and peasants of the nations of Russia against the foreign and domestic enemies of the Soviet power.

The imperialists of Great Britain, France, Japan and America started their military intervention without any declaration of war, although the intervention was a war, a war against Russia, and the worst kind of war at that. These "civilized" marauders secretly and stealthily made their way to Russian shores and landed their troops on Russia's territory.

The British and French landed troops in the north, occupied Archangel and Murmansk, supported a local Whiteguard revolt, overthrew the Soviets and set up a White "Government of North Russia."

In 1922, the USSR was established:

In December 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets was held, at which, on the proposal of Lenin and Stalin, a voluntary state union of the Soviet nations was formed—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Originally, the U.S.S.R. comprised the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.), the Trancaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (T.S.F.S.R.), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukr. S.S.R.) and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (B.S.S.R.). Somewhat later, three independent Union Soviet Republics—the Uzbek, Turkmen and Tadjik—were formed in Central Asia. All these republics have now united in a single union of Soviet states—the U.S.S.R.—on a voluntary and equal basis, each of them being reserved the right of freely seceding from the Soviet Union.

Socialist construction and early Soviet Union (1922–1953)

Death of Lenin and New Economic Policy

Main article: New Economic Policy

After the establishment of the USSR, Lenin would die in 1924. Before this, he had suffered several strokes and was under the care of his closest comrade, Joseph Stalin. After Lenin's death, Stalin replaced him, and led the Soviet Union. While the death of Lenin was a setback for the revolution, it was recoverable. Lenin's successor, Stalin, was another proletarian revolutionary who was able to guide the USSR to socialism.

The Soviet government continued the New Economic Policy which was in effect since 1921 and would discontinue it in 1928, beginning the initial five-year plan.

Great Break and first five-year plans

Main articles: Great Break and First fire-year plan in the Soviet Union

Stalin's Struggle Against Opportunism

See also: Trotskyism, Menshevism, and Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre

However, when Stalin took control of the USSR, the fight against Menshevism and other variants of opportunism were not concluded. Its modern varieties, namely Trotskyism, still fought against the Bolshevik party and attempted to wage bourgeois struggle against it. This struggle culminated in the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934 by a Trotskyist terror group.

However, these assassins were quickly discovered, and they were put to trial and executed in 1936.

Yezhovchina

Main article: Yezhovchina

In 1936-1938, a counter-revolutionary called Nikolai Yezhov raged terror against the Soviet populace behind Stalin's back, using false evidence for arrests and imprisoning many. However, Stalin soon caught on to this, and arrested Yezhov for these crimes, while freeing the innocent. Anti-Stalinists often maintain that the amount of those innocent that were arrested was higher than it actually was, while somehow maintaining at the same time that when Yezhov was put to trial for these crimes, it was a “show trial”.

Great Patriotic War

See also: Fascism, Second World War, and The Holocaust

In 1939, a new world war broke out, which, through the idle behavior of the major bourgeois-democratic powers, became a war of fascism against socialism. Through the intelligent tactics and valor of the Soviet people (including a non-aggression pact which allowed them to build up their defenses), the Nazi-led invasion of the Soviet Union was repelled and the war ultimately won by socialist and anti-fascist forces, and fascism suffered a major defeat. By May 1945, the fascist forces surrendered and the war had concluded in Europe.

Revisionist era and restoration of capitalism (1953–1991)

Murder of Stalin and revisionist turn

Main article: Soviet revisionism

In 1953, Stalin was murdered, and the USSR was put under the control of revisionists led by Nikita Khrushchev. Suddenly, revisionist concepts such as a "socialist state of the whole people" were enforced by the Soviet government. In the same year, COMECON was weaponized with "specialization". In 1955, a social-imperialist organization commonly known as the Warsaw Pact was created, in order to militarily enforce the Soviet revisionist line. In 1956, the Soviet revisionists slandered Stalin and many other principled communists and initiated a counter-revolutionary program of "De-Stalinization". The sovereignty of nations became an empty phrase, and the Soviet Union became a global imperialist superpower. In 1964, with Khrushchev being ousted and succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev as leader, the social-imperialist nature of the Soviet union became more evident.

Brezhnev era

Main article: Leonid Brezhnev

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Main article: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

By the mid-to-late 1980s, the Soviet Union was suffering from the long-term ramifications of capitalist restoration and revisionist rule. After years of leadership of the openly anti-communist politician Mikhail Gorbachev and his clique, the need for the revived Soviet bourgeoisie to maintain the outward façade of socialism disappeared. The Soviet Union would be torn apart by ethnic conflict and nationalism, leading to multiple Union republics succeeding from the Union by the end of the 1980s.

Following the rise of reactionary Russian nationalist Boris Yeltsin to leadership of the Russian SFSR and a failed coup d'état attempt in August 1991, the remaining power of the revisionist CPSU under Mikhail Gorbachev had dissipated and the party was banned in November 1991. This led to the official dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. The Soviet Union was divided between its former Union republics, now made independent states, with the largest being the Russian Federation.

See also

• Great October Socialist Revolution
• All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
• Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union