How Much Do You Know About The Former USSR?

The USSR began officially on Dec. 30, 1922. It was formed by The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR. This legalized the unification of several Eurasian republics, including Russia.

The USSR fell on Dec. 26, 1991. On this day, the Soviet government granted independence to all of its republics and created the commonwealth of independent states.

The USSR was a one-party socialist state. It was governed by the Communist Party.

Stalin was a Marxist. He believed that the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would go to war, and that the working classes would ultimately win and create a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Moscow was the capital of the USSR. Today it is still the capital and the largest city of Russia.

The USSR stretched from Eastern Europe and throughout Eurasia, sharing maritime borders with Japan and Alaska. It was the largest country on earth by land, spanning 11 time zones. It covered about a sixth of the world's land.

Vladimir Lenin led the Bolsheviks to overthrow the government during the October Revolution of 1917. This led to the official creation of the USSR in 1922.

Often in socialist state systems, the government adapts non-religion as the way of doing things. State atheism means that the government is actively anti-religion.

Revolutionary and political thinker Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was the first prime minister of the Soviet Union. He helped to create it in 1922, but only ran it for 2 years before his death in 1924.

After Lenin's death, a power struggle ensued. From it, Joseph Stalin became the head of the USSR in the mid-1920s. He headed the state until 1953.

The Holodomor was a man-made famine in several Soviet grain-growing regions in 1933. It killed 3-7 million people. In Ukraine, it is recognized as a genocide of Ukrainians carried out by the Soviet government.

The Great Purge was carried out by Lenin's government between 1936-1938 to eliminate political rivals and others who were considered a problem. It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Forced labor was used extensively throughout the USSR. It was used to control Soviet citizens and is what provided the manpower for many of their government projects.

While the UK, US, and various other countries collaborated on the Western Front to defeat the Nazis, the USSR largely handled them on the Eastern Front alone, with some help from smaller states. The Eastern Front of World War II is widely regarded to be the most cataclysmically violent theater of war in human history.

Those in the Red Army were famous for their brutality, known to destroy cities and fight until their deaths. The USSR sacrificed roughly 30 million of its own citizens to combat fascism.

The Cold War pitted the Eastern Bloc against the Western Bloc. The principal enemies of this long conflict following WWII were America and the USSR, who engaged in proxy wars around the world over the course of years.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953 at age 74 after suffering a fatal stroke. He was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin and wanted to dismantle his cult of personality and policies.

Khrushchev aimed to undo a lot of Stalin's mass imprisonment and censorship during a period of time known as the Khrushchev Thaw. This displeased the communist party's conservative wing so much that they overthrew Khrushchev in 1964.

During the Space Race, the East and West fought to innovate technology and explore space first. The USSR took an early lead with both the first artificial satellite and the first human space flight.

The Soviet atom bomb project was the classified project authorized by Joseph Stalin to research and create nuclear weapons. They successfully tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949.

The last leader of the USSR was Mikhail Gorbachev. He aimed to liberalize and reform the economy, but caused severe political instability with his policies.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, various Soviet satellite states in Eurasia overthrew their Soviet governments. These included states like Romania and East Germany. This era is also known as the Revolutions of 1989.

The Cold War officially ended on Dec. 3, 1989. It officially ended when Soviet leader Gorbachev met with President Bush on a Soviet ship.

The Soviet Union was a massive powerhouse covering a sixth of the world's land. It had the second largest economy on earth after the US, and was responsible for many technological advancements.

The USSR was truly massive, spanning 11 time zones and containing 5 distinct climate zones. These were tundra, steppes, taiga, mountains and desert.

The USSR was truly massive, sharing land borders with numerous Eurasian countries, from Hungary to North Korea. It was also across the Bering Strait from the northern United States.

A cult of personality was built up around Josef Stalin. He was presented as a sort of all-knowing and all-powerful figure, which earned him both fans and critics abroad.

Nicholas II was the final Tsar of Russia. He abdicated in 1917 following the February Revolution, to be replaced with a Russian Provisional Government. This government was overthrown by Bolshevik Revolutionaries during the October Revolution of 1917.

Lenin died at 53 years old in 1924 after a long decline. In 1925 his preserved brain was dissected, which revealed that he had suffered from severe sclerosis.

Lenin was a devout Marxist. He believed that eventually society would evolve into a classless, stateless and completely equitable society where workers controlled their own destiny and took care of each others' needs first. He thought that socialism would help society make this transition.

Stalin's government was a totalitarian government under which all rivals or opponents were repressed, imprisoned or killed. His regime oversaw hundreds of thousands of executions and multiple famines.

The Soviets made Yuri Gagarin the first human to ever be sent into space in 1961. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go to space in 1963. However, before both of these people they sent a dog named Laika to space.

Throughout the 1980s, the cracks in the USSR began to show. A period of stagnation and aging leaders did not help, and many of their satellite states began to revolt and break away.

On December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR. He declared the office extinct and that night the Soviet flag was lowered and the Russian flag was raised in Russia.

The Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, voted itself out of existence. This followed all of its republics voting to leave and Gorbachev resigning as leader.