Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

Also known as the Soviet Union; world's first communist regime and principal rival of the United States during the Cold War.

Origins of the USSR

The USSR arose as a result of the collapse of the Russian empire, one of the longest-standing monarchies in Europe. The Romanov family had ruled Russia for centuries, but during the reign of Czar Nicholas II (1894–1917), Russia began to come apart. Economic and political troubles caused popular discontent with the czar's authoritarian rule. Although the 1906 creation of the Duma (parliament) was supposed to give the people a voice in government, real power still lay with the czar.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought Russia and its allies Britain and France into conflict with Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war went badly for Russia, which suffered military defeats on the battlefield and hunger, shortages, and deep political troubles among the civilian population. The February Revolution of 1917 brought rioting in the streets and caused the shaken czar to lose control of the government. Nicholas dissolved the Duma and abdicated his throne, throwing the country into revolution.

With Nicholas gone, the Duma joined with the Petrograd Soviet (worker's council) to form a provisional government, but this was unable to provide real reform. Vladimir Lenin, leader of a radical socialist party known as the Bolsheviks, put forth a program that promised peace, food, land redistribution, and local government. As the populace grew increasingly restless for change, the Bolsheviks staged a coup, seizing power in the October Revolution of 1917. They proclaimed the founding of a new state—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—built on the foundations of the fallen Russian empire.

The Bolsheviks set about creating a communist state, abolishing the old imperial regime of classes and titles, prohibiting counterrevolutionary speech and action, and establishing state ownership of land. The workers were to be liberated and united in their common struggle, and land would be given to the poor. The bourgeois and the aristocracy who lived off the labor of others were to be eliminated. The Bolsheviks, however, were not securely in control. Turbulence continued as other groups, notably the less revolutionary Mensheviks, battled Lenin for control. In December 1917, Lenin dismissed the recently formed Constituent Assembly after a vote that did not favor the Bolsheviks, and he used the Cheka (secret police) to quash resistance to Bolshevik control. The country dissolved into a civil war that pitted the Bolshevik Reds against the Whites—social democrats, more moderate socialists, czarists, and others. The Bolsheviks, with better organization and more military support, eventually triumphed in 1920 and consolidated their control over the USSR.

[Page 747]From the time the Bolsheviks gained power, the Western world looked askance at the Soviet Union. The West was fearful that the communist revolution would spread from Russia to its own countries. Ideologically opposed to communism and fearful of domestic threats to their leadership, western powers including Great Britain, France, and the United States made consistent efforts to balance their power against that of the Soviet Union. On the whole, however, Soviet foreign policy was aimed at counterbalancing the West and protecting the USSR from invasion.

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