1922

USSR established
In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and
the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan,
and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new
communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country
in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian
Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated
the soviet forces, a coalition of workers and soldiers committees that called
for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire. In the
USSR, all levels of government were controlled by the Communist Party, and
the partys politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary,
effectively ruled the country. Soviet industry was owned and managed by the
state, and agricultural land was divided into state-run collective farms.
In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union
grew into one of the worlds most powerful and influential states and
eventually encompassed 15 republicsRussia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia,
Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In 1991, the Soviet
Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.