History
The history of the Soviet Union has two basic aspects: It continues the history of the Russian Empire, presented in the article on Russia; and it chronicles the unique social system described in the preceding sections of this article.
After World War I
Chronologically, Soviet history began on November 7, 1917, when the Russian Revolution culminated in the assumption of state power by the Congress of Soviets, led by the Bolshevik party under Lenin. After proclaiming itself the repository of governmental authority, the congress immediately issued decrees calling for the withdrawal of Russia from World War I, for the nationalization of all land, and for the formation of a Council of People's Commissars to act as the executive branch of government. On November 15, 1917, the Soviets granted the rights of equality and self-determination to all the numerous national groups inhabiting the territory of the former Russian Empire. The first nation to take advantage of this opportunity was Finland; a Finland national government was established, and its independence from Soviet rule was recognized. In another early decree, the Soviet government proclaimed the separation of church and state; although according religious freedom to the individual, the state itself opposed organized religion. The fundamental policies contained in these and other decrees were incorporated into the first Soviet constitution, adopted in July 1918.
Post-WW II Arrangements
By the end of the war, the Soviet Union was recognized as one of the great powers of the world. Stalin participated with the heads of government of the U.S. and Great Britain at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 to decide the overall military and political strategy of the war and a common postwar European policy. The USSR also played a leading role in the preliminary international conferences leading to the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
Instead of making a treaty immediately with defeated and disorganized Germany, the victor nations temporarily designated four occupation zones. The eastern zone was assigned to the USSR. Berlin, surrounded by the Soviet zone, was divided into four sectors; its eastern zone was also assigned to the USSR. The occupied zones were to be administered as parts of one country, with free trade among them. German territory east of a line formed by the Oder and Neisse rivers was assigned to Polish occupancy pending a final peace settlement. The northern part of East Prussia was ceded to the USSR. The Soviet Union, however, set up its own type of government in the areas assigned to it, and by 1947 the so-called iron curtain had been drawn between Eastern and Western Europe. The USSR, having suffered enormous losses, exacted huge reparations in the form of dismantled industrial plants and the output of current production. It also benefited from the forced labor of millions of German prisoners of war.
The Cold War Begins
In its approach to postwar problems the Soviet government was motivated by an expansionist policy designed to enlarge the area ruled by Communists loyal to the USSR, to strengthen its security against future aggression, and to utilize the world Communist movement as a means of subverting other countries and bringing them into the Soviet orbit.
The new Soviet policy was soon signaled by violations of various wartime agreements. At the Potsdam Conference, held after the victory in Europe, the Soviet government made demands manifestly in excess of the needs of its national security. The demands were rejected by the U.S. and Great Britain to prevent the establishment of a vast Soviet sphere of power. Despite growing acrimony among the Allies, agreement was reached at Potsdam on the general lines of the occupation policy, on various reparations policies, and on the temporary German-Polish and Polish- Soviet boundaries.
Utilizing the threat of its military force, the USSR violated these agreements and made a sustained assault on the political, economic, and social structures of the occupied Soviet borderlands. Implementation of Soviet foreign policy generated a globe-girdling political, diplomatic, and economic conflict with the U.S., known as the cold war.
Takeover Techniques
In the countries in which the influence of the Soviet Union was predominant, namely, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, and East Germany, the politicoeconomic structure was gradually reorganized. Opposing political groups were isolated and then destroyed, large landholdings were expropriated, and (with the exception of Poland) collectivization was instituted; virtually all industry was nationalized.
In establishing political domination, the Soviet technique was first to cooperate in coalition governments, in which the Communists were a minority but controlled the ministries directing the police, the armed forces, and the economy. This was followed (beginning in 1947) by the establishment of regimes called people's democracies, under which the Communists established authoritarian control of the state. In 1948 Czechoslovakia, a country not directly in the Soviet orbit, came under Communist control through subversion of a coalition government. In the same year, however, Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Tito, effectively resisted Soviet efforts to obtain control of the country. Yugoslavia survived heavy pressure only because of its staunch national unity and Western economic aid. These developments alarmed the U.S. and Western Europe and led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. To coordinate the economic activities of those states under Soviet control, the USSR in 1949 established the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON), with Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and East Germany as comembers.
Struggle for Leadership
Stalin remained in absolute control until his death in March 1953, when a collective leadership took power. Georgy M. Malenkov, chosen party secretary, also became premier; Molotov, a former premier and foreign minister, became a first deputy premier and foreign minister, and Lavrenty Beria became minister of internal affairs; Voroshilov became president. Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Malenkov as party secretary later in the year. These men, along with two other first deputy premiers, Nikolay A. Bulganin and Lazar M. Kaganovich, were the leaders.
A struggle for power was immediately apparent, however. Beria was soon removed for "criminal and antiparty activities," and in December 1953 it was announced that he had been tried for conspiracy, found guilty, and shot. Several other important officials, friends of Beria, were executed in 1954. (Since that time discredited officials have not been executed.) In 1955 Malenkov was forced to resign, and Marshal Bulganin was promptly elected to succeed him as premier.
Destalinization
Then, in a startling move at the 20th Party Congress, held in Moscow February 14-25, 1956, several Communist leaders denounced Stalin and repudiated much that he represented. The most violent attack was made by Khrushchev, who condemned Stalin for having replaced the collective leadership proper to Marxism with a cult of himself, which had generated disastrous consequences for the USSR. Khrushchev charged that Stalin had been guilty of "mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigationÉof honest and innocent Communists"; that he had not prepared adequate defenses against the German invasion of June 1941, and that he had then mishandled the war effort, thus causing the needless deaths of "hundreds of thousands of our soldiers"; that he had been "sickly suspicious" of his colleagues and that he "evidently had plans to finish off the old members of the Politburo"; that he had been responsible for the break with Yugoslavia and had jeopardized "peaceful relations with other nations."
The attacks on Stalin profoundly shocked many Communists in the USSR and throughout the world. In the destalinization campaign, portraits were removed from public places, institutions and localities bearing his name were renamed, and textbooks were rewritten to deflate his reputation.
Khrushchev's Ascendancy
The struggle for power finally resulted in the triumph of Khrushchev in 1957. He succeeded in ousting Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, and others. When Bulganin was forced to resign in 1958, Khrushchev stepped into the premiership, continuing his party secretaryship, and collective leadership appeared to have ended. By the time of the 21st Party Congress in 1961, Khrushchev was in complete ascendancy, the center of a new cult of personality. He repeated some of his earlier denunciations of the old dictator, had Stalin's body removed from the mausoleum where it had rested beside that of Lenin, and demanded that the Stalinists who had opposed him in 1957 be expelled from the party. In the following years some of the extreme anti-Stalinism was softened, and Stalin was allowed some credit for building the Communist party and for organizing victory in World War II.
Leonid I. Brezhnev, who in 1960 had succeeded the 79-year-old Voroshilov as president, was also assigned to the party secretariat in 1963. In July 1964, at Khrushchev's proposal, Brezhnev was relieved of the presidency to give full time to party work. Anastas I. Mikoyan, a veteran party functionary, became president. In the fall of that year, Khrushchev was especially ebullient and full of plans after extensive traveling in and out of the USSR. Then, suddenly, in October, he was toppled-relieved both of his party secretaryship and the premiership. The reasons for his ouster may have included unsatisfactory progress in agriculture and industry, and foreign policy disasters such as the Cuban crisis in 1962 and the failure of Soviet efforts since 1959 to obtain West Berlin. Some discrediting of the deposed leader followed, but nothing comparable with destalinization. Some of his most intimate colleagues were also removed from office.
Brezhnev Gains Power
Following the precedent for succession established when Stalin died, the power was divided. Brezhnev was appointed to the party secretaryship, and Aleksey N. Kosygin became premier. During the next five years these men apparently worked together as a team. Nikolay V. Podgorny was president from 1965 to 1977. By the 1970s, however, while the appearance of collective leadership was retained, Brezhnev had won preeminence. In 1976 he was reappointed Communist party general secretary and after Podgorny was removed, he also became president in 1977. A new constitution was promulgated in 1977. Shortly after Brezhnev died, in late 1982, he was succeeded as general secretary of the party by Yuri Andropov, former head of the Soviet secret police (KGB).
Economic Development
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Soviet economic development after World War II followed lines worked out in 5-year plans and a 7-year plan (1959-65), although the plans were sometimes not fully announced until they had been operating for a year or two.
Agriculture
Agriculture continued to engage much of the population. Khrushchev developed two major plans for increasing grain production: bringing marginal lands, especially in Kazakhstan, under cultivation, and raising corn. Neither proved completely successful. In 1958 most of the control was taken from central government agencies and given to 39 area councils. The collectives bought the machinery they had previously rented from tractor stations, and the government paid higher prices for compulsory grain deliveries. Unfavorable weather was largely responsible for poor grain crops in 1963, 1965, 1969, 1972, and 1975. Other causes were the apparent inefficiency of collective farming and the shortage of labor caused by migration of rural youths to towns. The crop failures slowed down the economic growth rate and greatly increased the foreign debt because the government, to avert famine, bought large amounts of wheat from the U.S. and Canada. The government took steps to combat the problem by paying a monthly wage to farmers; offering new incentives for superior production; adopting more efficient management techniques; and increasing the use of fertilizer, labor- saving machinery, and irrigation. A long-term policy involved reactivating a plan originated by Khrushchev to evacuate the people of many small villages and resettle them in large farming centers. Such measures, combined with favorable weather, resulted in record-high harvests in 1973, 1974, and 1976. Irrigation and reforestation made even the marginal lands of Kazakhstan remarkably productive. Nevertheless, agriculture remained a serious problem.
Industry
Production of consumer goods had long lagged in the USSR. Total industrial production in 1957 was reported as 33 times that of 1913, but the increase in consumer items was only 13 times higher, compared with an increase of 74 times in heavy industries. The regime promised an increase in consumer goods, but accomplished little. The regional industrial councils were consolidated in 1957 and again in 1962, and industrial enterprises were combined. By 1964 attention centered on the fertilizer, plastics, and rubber industries.
Management
Yevsey Liberman and other Soviet economists had advocated the introduction of some capitalistic features into the framework of Marxism as a means of increasing industrial production, particularly recognizing the profit motive as a stimulus to plant efficiency. Kosygin, Brezhnev, and other officials accepted these ideas, admitting that management methods had fallen behind productive capacities. The correct principle, they stated, was combining centralized general direction with cost accounting, production based on orders, wage incentives, and other capitalist practices. In a pilot project begun in July 1965, 400 clothing and shoe factories based their production on orders received rather than on quotas set by the government. In October the Supreme Soviet adopted legislation applying this policy to industries, farms, transportation, construction, and communications. Working capital was to be assigned to each enterprise, and local management was to determine its use. A total payroll was also to be assigned to each enterprise, but the local management might pay by time or piecework and might pay bonuses based on profits. By mid-1969 enterprises producing one-third of the total industrial output were operating under the new system. Developments in the 1970s, however, brought about the gradual decline of the Liberman approach.
Construction
Some industries lagged considerably, particularly construction. The migration of rural population into cities that accompanied rapid industrialization resulted in a housing shortage. New methods for prefabricating walls and even whole rooms were borrowed from the West, but factories for making these products were not built as rapidly as projected, and housing goals were seldom met. Moreover, new housing was not well built and deteriorated rapidly.
Minerals
Of great importance for the growth of the Soviet economy was the increased development of Siberia. The opening of new fields of oil and natural gas in Tyumen' in western Siberia augmented the Soviet Union's supply of energy sources. Deposits of copper and coal have been discovered farther east. Construction is under way on the 3218-km (2000-mi) Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM) railroad, which runs north of the present Trans-Siberian Railroad and thus at a safer distance from the Chinese border.
Cultural Developments
From the mid-20th century the Soviet government tried to enable all citizens of the Soviet Union's many nationalities to participate fully in the culture of a unified Communist society and at the same time to preserve the traditions of their regional homelands. Tuition-free education in the form of day schools, evening classes, volunteer "people's universities," and correspondence courses was available to everyone. Special efforts were made to reach isolated areas where educational opportunities had been few. Instruction was in Russian or in the Soviet Union's many other languages. Preliterate peoples were provided with their own alphabets, dictionaries, and grammars. As a result, illiteracy (about 70 percent in the Russian Empire) was eliminated, and a large part of the population acquired political awareness and the technical skills needed to develop a modern industrialized state.
Soviet cultural achievements in the natural sciences were outstanding. In some areas of chemistry and physics, for example, the Soviets outstripped all other countries. Great attention was paid to nuclear energy and to space exploration. The first earth satellites, Sputnik 1 and 2, were launched in 1957. The first circumnavigation of the earth in a spaceship was made by Yury A. Gagarin in 1961. By the early 1980s Soviet technology had produced more than 30 manned space vehicles, and the USSR had launched more than 1100 spacecraft and numerous satellites.
Nor were the arts neglected. Unions were formed for writers, painters, and other creative people. Theaters and concert halls were built, and orchestras and theater and dance companies sent on tour. Local clubs and palaces of culture brought urban and folk arts to the general public, and the government encouraged thousands of amateur groups.
State Control
The state insisted, however, that all aspects of Soviet culture foster Communist society. This requirement did relatively little damage to science, although the government's vacillating attitude toward biologist and agronomist Trofim D. Lysenko shows how political values can affect scientific views.
Communist influence tended to hamper the social sciences, which had to be placed in a Marxist context. The Communist attitude toward music is less clear: The composers Sergey Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich were both alternately in and out of favor. After the mid-1960s even jazz and twelve-tone music were officially praised. The fine arts and literature suffered most from Communism, which required them to adhere to Socialist realism, a secular optimistic exaltation of the Soviet people, in a style that satisfied popular taste. Avant Garde literature and the paintings of Marc Chagall, and Kasimir Malevich, and Wassily Kandinsky were banned. Religion was a complex problem; the government accepted religious toleration in theory but was itself atheistic and opposed organized religion in practice. Religious services were allowed, but believers were denied educational and professional advancement and were subjected to antireligious propaganda.
Dissidence
Although such pervasive political guidelines do not disturb the vast majority of the population, a small but persistent current of dissident intellectuals, artists, religious believers, and nationalists wrote open letters, circulated clandestine literature (samizdat), and staged demonstrations in the cause of greater freedom. A "thaw" in government control during the destalinization years from 1955 through 1964 was followed by a return to a more repressive policy, especially after the radical attempts at liberalization in Czechoslovkia in 1968. Hundreds of dissidents were fired, imprisoned, or sent to mental institutions or hard-labor camps, usually for actions considered subversive to the regime. The most distinguished among these dissidents were the writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and the nuclear physicist Andrey D. Sakharov. Solzhenitsyn, who was forbidden to publish in the Soviet Union in 1968, was forcibly expelled from the country in 1974. Sakharov, because of his distinguished scientific reputation, for a long time escaped punishment, but having denounced the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, he was isolated the following month by banishment in Gorkiy, a city "out of limits" to foreigners, where he was kept under police surveillance bordering on house arrest. Sakharov was permitted to return to Moscow in December 1986. Many intellectual dissidents were Jews who wanted to immigrate to Israel but were refused by the government, which did not want to lose expensively trained citizens. Thousands of other Jews, however, were allowed to leave. Religious dissidents also included Jehovah's Witnesses, Lithuanian Catholics, and Baptists. Prominent among nationalist dissidents were Crimean Tatars and Soviet Germans, moved to Siberia in World War II, who wanted to return home.
Affairs Abroad
Since World War II the Soviet Union has had the closest relations with the Eastern European nations, called its satellites. The CMEA after 1949 attempted to work out Soviet plans for the economic integration of its member nations in the Eastern bloc. Under the plans, each country would produce what it was best prepared for and purchase other products from the other countries. Opposition to this supranational system under Soviet domination developed, notably in Romania, which rejected its assignment as a basically agricultural and oil- producing country. Despite such dissatisfaction, additional economic links were later established, including an International Bank of Economic Collaboration. Pipelines carrying oil and gas from the Volga-Urals region to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany further integrated the economies of these nations with that of the USSR.
Relations with Satellites
Yugoslavia, which immediately after World War II seemed interested in cooperation with the Soviet Union, soon broke sharply with it, refusing to accept Moscow's direction. In the other satellites Soviet domination increased until 1955; in 1952, 80 percent of Soviet trade was with the satellites. In 1954 the USSR granted independence to East Germany, which was freed from further reparations payments but retained a large contingent of Soviet troops. Formation of the Warsaw Pact for military assistance in 1955 was a countermeasure to NATO and served to tighten Soviet control. After the death of Stalin, relations with Yugoslavia improved, only to decline again, especially after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After 1961 the Soviet Union completely lost control of Albania, which until 1978 remained closely allied with China.
Relations with Western Europe
In 1955 the Soviet Union agreed to the independence and neutrality of Austria. The same year full diplomatic relations were established with West Germany, but the West German "economic miracle"-a "magnet" on the borders of Eastern Europe-and the new Ostpolitik of the West German foreign minister (later chancellor) Willy Brandt increased Soviet misgivings about its position in an Eastern Europe tempted by Western trade, technology, and ideas. The USSR championed East Germany against West Germany and caused repeated crises in the relations of the two Germanys. The problem of West Berlin, surrounded by East German territory, was particularly thorny. The USSR tried to bring all of Berlin under East German control and supported East German pressures for German unification. Relations with West Germany, however, improved at the end of the decade with the advent of a Social Democratic government in the Federal Republic. In August 1970 the Soviet and West German governments signed a treaty renouncing the use of force to settle disputes and accepting existing European frontiers, including the Oder-Neisse boundary between East Germany and Poland. Tensions were further reduced in 1973, when West and East Germany granted each other full diplomatic recognition.
Relations with the U.S.
Soviet relations with the United States since World War II have been marked by alternating periods of crisis and cooperation.
In 1962 the USSR and U.S. clashed over Cuba. The USSR had maintained close relations with Fidel Castro's government, promising help in case of attack by the U.S. In 1962, when the USSR provided Cuban bases with offensive missiles, and U.S. President John F. Kennedy demanded their withdrawal, Premier Khrushchev yielded. The USSR continued to support the faltering Cuban economy through trade, loans, and technical aid, a policy that gave it great influence in Cuban affairs. That influence increased as a result of the cooperation between Soviet and Cuban advisers and soldiers in Africa and Asia after 1976.
Arms Control
Disarmament was considered of paramount importance, both inside and outside the UN. In 1954 and again in 1959, the Soviet Union suggested complete disarmament, but the proposals failed when the USSR rejected provisions for inspection to verify such an agreement. In 1960 the USSR announced a reduction of about one-third in its military establishment, but again the Western nations would not follow such a lead without inspection provisions more stringent than the Soviet Union would accept.
By 1953 the USSR had a hydrogen bomb. In the following years test explosions, by all the major powers, of increasingly powerful nuclear bombs seemed to make agreement on limitation imperative. Little was accomplished, however, until 1963, when the USSR signed an agreement with the United States and Great Britain banning all nuclear tests except underground. It also joined the U.S. in agreeing to keep outer space free of all armaments. A series of strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the two powers, begun in 1969, resulted in agreements in 1972, 1974, and 1979, limiting missile weapons and sites.