I.

Introduction

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian, Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik), former multinational federal state of European and Asian peoples, established as a result of the Russian Revolution of November 1917, on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was generally called the Soviet Union, but also, on occasion, Soviet Russia or Russia.

II.

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, where a 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 granting 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.

A.

Peace Treaty

Peace negotiations with Germany were initiated in December 1917. The peace terms presented by the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (now Brest) proved unacceptable, and negotiations were broken off in February 1918. A new German offensive, however, persuaded the Soviet leaders to reopen the talks, and early in March the treaty was concluded. By its terms the separation of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states from the Soviet Union was recognized, and the Soviet government was compelled to pay heavy indemnities to Germany. Lenin considered the treaty essential to the Soviet cause, despite its severity, because it gave the government time to consolidate its power; in addition, the Bolshevik leader believed proletarian revolutions were imminent in other European countries. Although such revolts did break out later in several countries, notably in Germany and Hungary, the uprisings there were unsuccessful, and the Soviet government remained the only government proclaiming the establishment of socialism as its goal.

The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk led to a schism within the Soviet government. The Left Social Revolutionary party, which had been collaborating with the Bolsheviks, declared the treaty a betrayal of the cause of the revolution and withdrew from the government. Relying upon their traditional methods of political struggle, the Left Social Revolutionaries assassinated the German ambassador in Moscow, in the vain hope of stirring the Germans to renew hostilities. They also made attempts on the lives of several Bolshevik leaders. Lenin was severely wounded by one of the terrorists, receiving an injury that contributed to his early death. The Bolsheviks, in return, launched the so-called Red Terror, suppressing the Left Social Revolutionary party and executing many political opponents. Other minority parties and factions were gradually eliminated by the Bolsheviks, and the Soviet Union emerged as a one-party state.

B.

Civil War

Bolshevik political, economic, and social policies led to civil war and foreign intervention. In Siberia, a force of 45,000 Czech former prisoners of war, who had been armed by the tsarist government to fight against Germany, launched a campaign against the Soviet authorities. Murmansk and Archangel, the principal cities of Russia's far north, were occupied by Allied forces. Japanese forces occupied Vladivostok, and an American expeditionary force landed in that city. White Russia (an area approximately equivalent to present-day Belarus), Ukraine, and the Caucasus were occupied by the Germans. In the autumn of 1918 Admiral Aleksandr V. Kolchak, commanding a large anti-Bolshevik force, proclaimed himself “supreme ruler of Russia” and established his capital at Omsk in Siberia. Early in 1919 a powerful attack on the Soviet forces was launched from Ukraine by a large White (that is, anti-Bolshevik) army commanded by General Anton I. Denikin. Another White army, under General Nikolay N. Yudenich, advanced on Petrograd (now St Petersburg). Despite a series of initial reverses, the Bolsheviks succeeded in repelling these attacks by early 1920. In April of that year a new campaign was launched by the Polish army, with some help from Belorussian troops commanded by Baron Pyotr N. Wrangel. Two months later the Soviet forces, which had been reorganized and renamed the Red Army early in 1918, began a counter-offensive. The war with Poland ended with the signing in March 1921 of the Treaty of Riga, by which certain western areas of White Russia and of Ukraine were ceded to Poland. With the expulsion of the Japanese occupation forces from eastern Siberia late in 1922, the period of civil war and foreign intervention came to an end, and the Soviet regime was no longer in immediate danger.

The Bolsheviks triumphed in the civil war and against foreign intervention because of their determination, organization, and good leadership, especially that of Lenin and Leon Trotsky, because of disunity among their opponents, and because the peoples of the intervening countries refused to support further fighting.

Bolshevik economic policy during the civil war period entailed the rapid nationalization of industry and transport, and the ruthless confiscation of all supplies and equipment needed for military purposes left the national economy completely exhausted. With hostilities ended and Soviet rule consolidated, the government faced the necessity of restoring the economy. Trotsky and certain other leaders favoured extending the rigid wartime policies and continuing forced progress towards communism. Lenin chose a different course: reduction of the heavy wartime requisitions of produce from the peasants, in order to stimulate food production, and temporary relaxation of controls over industry and trade, permitting growth of small capitalist enterprises, in order to increase production. Lenin's so-called New Economic Policy was adopted in March 1921 by the Russian Communist party, as the Bolsheviks called themselves after 1918.

III.

Stalin Era

Lenin's death early in 1924 occasioned a bitter struggle for power. The principal antagonists were Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, then general secretary of the party, both of whom claimed to be the rightful executors of Lenin's policies. In contrast to Trotsky, who was primarily an intellectual, a theorist, and a gifted military leader, Stalin was a clever and determined organizer. Through his control of the party apparatus, Stalin succeeded in winning the support of a majority within the party and in consolidating his rule. In November 1927 a party referendum completely repudiated Trotsky's policies, expelled him from the party, and exiled him to Almaty. Two years later he was banished from the Soviet Union. In 1940 he was assassinated in Mexico, presumably by an agent of Stalin.

In 1929 Stalin was recognized as the supreme leader of the party and the country. He then began the series of purges that marked his 24 years of rule, turning first against his former allies in the struggle with the Trotskyists. These leaders, notably Nikolay I. Bukharin and Aleksey I. Rykov, were driven from the higher councils of the party.

Thereafter, Stalin relied solely on his control of the party and the police, and on colleagues he had elevated to power. Important among these were Vyacheslav M. Molotov, Valerian V. Kuybyshev, Grigory K. Ordzhonikidze, and Kliment Y. Voroshilov.

A.

Union Constitution and Recognition

During the 1920s sweeping changes were made in governmental administration and marked improvements were achieved in the internal economy and foreign affairs of the country. Up to the end of 1923 the territory which was controlled by the Soviet government comprised the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the eastern halves of Belorussia and Ukraine, and the Caucasus. A plan of federation was drawn up under Stalin's supervision, and in January 1924 a new constitution was put forward, reorganizing the areas under Soviet control into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The new state was initially composed of the Russian, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian, and Belorussian Soviet Socialist republics. Although a degree of local autonomy was granted to each republic, a tight control over foreign affairs, defence, and economic planning was kept by the central Soviet government. In later years Transcaucasia was divided into the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist republics; Kazakhstan and Central Asia were separated from the Russian SFSR; and Central Asia was divided into the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tadzhik, and Kirgiz Soviet Socialist republics.

By 1924 the major world powers, having initially attempted to isolate the Soviet government, had established diplomatic relations with it, and the Soviet Union was taking part in international conferences. The United States, the last major power withholding recognition, formally recognized the Soviet government in 1933, during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

B.

Economic Transformation

By 1927 the New Economic Policy devised by Lenin, under which a certain measure of capitalism was permitted, had brought about sufficient recovery to warrant an effort to renew the drive towards socialism in accordance with long-range Soviet objectives. Accordingly, a new period of planned economy began in 1928 with the inauguration of the first of Stalin's Five-Year Plans. The basic aims of the Five-Year Plans were to convert the USSR from a backward agricultural country to a leading industrial power, to effect the complete collectivization of agriculture, and to transform the very nature of society.

C.

The Great Purge

Politically, the mid-1930s were marked by a drastic purge from the Communist party and the government of all elements alleged to be in opposition to the policies of Stalin. The purge was touched off by the assassination in December 1934 of Sergey M. Kirov, a supporter of Stalin and member of the party. Between 1935 and 1939 Stalin had all those suspected of opposition removed from posts of authority; many were imprisoned, exiled to Siberia, or executed. Indeed, between 1934 and 1938 two-thirds of the members of the 1934 Central Committee were sentenced and executed. More than half of the high-ranking army officers were purged between 1936 and 1938.

In a series of spectacular trials held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938, several of the most prominent party leaders, including Grigory Y. Zinovyev, Bukharin, and Rykov, were accused, convicted, and executed for allegedly conspiring with Germany and Japan to overthrow the Soviet government. In a separate, secret trial, several commanders of the Red Army, including Marshal Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky, were convicted on similar charges and executed. The trials aroused worldwide condemnation of the Soviet system, which was seriously weakened by these great losses.

D.

Foreign Affairs

In Moscow's view, international events in the 1930s increasingly endangered the security of the USSR. In East Asia, Japan occupied Dongbei in 1931, and friction gradually mounted between the Japanese occupation armies and the Soviet forces stationed along the Dongbei border. In 1938 the previously sporadic armed clashes developed into serious border warfare. At the same time, Hitler's rise to power in Germany, with his policy of expansionism and anti-communism, resulted in an even graver threat to Soviet security. While seeking alliances with other powers, especially France and Britain, to counter these threats, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934. During the succeeding five years, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, Maksim M. Litvinov, repeatedly urged the members of the league to take concerted action against the successive aggressions of the Fascist powers. The Soviet Union sought also to obtain support for this action, which it called collective security, by encouraging the formation in foreign countries of so-called united-front, or popular-front, governments. The united-front policy called for collaboration of Communist, socialist, and centrist political groups to oppose Fascist movements.

In the summer of 1938 a grave crisis arose when the German government demanded the cession by Czechoslovakia of the Sudeten region, a border area with a large German minority. The Soviet Union announced its readiness to support the Czechs in resisting this demand and called upon France and Britain to offer similar aid. The French and British governments, instead, accepted Hitler's assurance that this demand embodied the final territorial acquisition sought by Germany. The result was the Munich Pact of September 1938, providing for the cession of the disputed areas to Germany. The signing of this pact signalled the failure of the Soviet collective-security policy. In March 1939 the Germans advanced eastwards from the Sudetenland into Czechoslovakia and quickly took full control.

E.

World War II

Engaged in a border war with Japan in East Asia and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government in 1939 began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany, meanwhile continuing negotiations, begun earlier, with France and Britain for an alliance against Germany. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German pact of friendship and non-aggression. This pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. On September 1 Germany invaded Poland, thereby provoking declarations of war by Great Britain and France and launching World War II. Sixteen days later, the Red Army crossed the Polish frontier, took possession of eastern Poland, and began the Sovietization of the occupied areas. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Siberia. On September 29, the German and Soviet governments signed a treaty demarcating their so-called spheres of interest in Poland. The treaty acknowledged the supremacy of each power in its respective sphere and provided for joint resistance to interference from third parties.

The pact with Hitler signalled the opening of a new phase in the development of the USSR. In the immediately preceding years the central emphasis of Soviet policy had been on “building socialism”, that is, on the industrialization of the country. The seizure of eastern Poland was the first of a series of territorial annexations that launched a new expansionist phase of Soviet policy. The Polish annexation was soon followed by domination of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Non-aggression pacts, imposed on the Baltic states, gave the Soviet Union the right to station troops on their soil.

E.1.

The Winter War with Finland

Also during the autumn of 1939, the Soviet government demanded of Finland that it cede territory on the Karelian Isthmus north-east of Leningrad and permit the USSR to establish a naval base on the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Finland. Rejection by the Finnish government of the Soviet demands led to the undeclared Russo-Finnish War, which began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on November 30, 1939. After a valiant but futile resistance, the Finns were overcome by the immensely superior forces of the Soviet Union. The war ended on March 12, 1940. By the treaty terms signed on that day, the Soviet Union acquired the Karelian territories and the port of Viborg, as well as other strategic and economic advantages.

E.2.

Expansion in the Baltic and the Balkans

Soviet expansion continued during 1940. On June 15-16 the USSR demanded free passage of Soviet troops and the formation of pro-Soviet governments in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Without waiting for acceptance of these demands, the Red Army occupied the countries. Soviet puppet governments were established, and all anti-Soviet elements were suppressed. By decrees of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, issued between August 1 and August 8, the three states were annexed as Union republics.

At the same time the Soviet Union was extending its reach to the Balkans. Demands were made on Romania for the cession of Bessarabia, annexed by Romania from Soviet Russia in 1918, and for the surrender of northern Bukovina. Romania complied at the end of June 1940; the ceded territories were later incorporated into the Moldavian SSR. In the autumn of 1940 the Germans established a puppet government in Romania and guaranteed the Romanian-Soviet frontier.

Still fearful of German intentions, the USSR had an interest in ending hostilities with Japan; on April 13, 1941, the two countries signed a five-year neutrality pact.

E.3.

German invasion

On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, surprising Stalin, who had refused to believe that an attack was imminent. Italy and Romania declared war on the USSR the same day. Instantly the world military and political alignment was radically transformed, and the scope of the war began to assume global proportions. Germany now confronted enemies on both west and east, as in World War I. As Finland, Hungary, Albania, and other Axis satellites declared war on the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States undertook to extend material aid to the USSR. The US programme, known as Lend-Lease, ultimately provided the USSR with some $12 billion worth of equipment and food. After the United States entered the war in December 1941, the three powers became military allies. In January 1942, four months after it had pledged allegiance to the principles of the Atlantic Charter, the Soviet government and 25 other Allied governments signed a declaration formally subscribing to the programme and purposes of the Atlantic Charter and pledging their cooperation in the war against the Axis powers.

The Axis assault on the USSR was launched from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. During the late summer and autumn of 1941 the Germans plunged deeply into the Soviet Union, striking at Leningrad, Moscow, and Ukraine. As the Red Army reeled under the stupendous blows of the German armies, Stalin began frantic efforts to remove industrial plants and workers from the path of the invader and relocated them in and behind the Ural Mountains. Much of what could not be removed was laid waste in accordance with a “scorched-earth” policy.

For a time the German blitzkrieg appeared successful, as millions of Soviet soldiers were encircled and annihilated or captured. In the Baltic states, Belorussia and Ukraine, the invaders met with a friendly reception from those who had suffered most under the Stalinist yoke. The atrocities of the Germans, however, stiffened Soviet resistance. The advance on Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was checked in September 1941, but the city was besieged until January 1944; casualties there ultimately exceeded 1,250,000. The advance on Moscow was stopped in October 1941.

E.4.

The Battle of Stalingrad

In the south the Germans were more successful; they took the entire Ukraine, and pressed on towards the Volga to sever Moscow and Leningrad from the Caucasus and south-west Asia. They were finally halted and defeated in the epic Battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) (August 1942 through January 1943). This battle was the turning point of the Russo-German war and one of the decisive engagements of world history. Thereafter the Germans were driven steadily westwards. In the spring and summer of 1944 the Baltic states and Ukraine were practically cleared of enemy forces; by the end of August, Soviet armies were fighting in Poland and Romania. Other victories followed. On April 22, 1945, Soviet forces entered the outskirts of Berlin; three days later Soviet and American troops met at the River Elbe. The war in Europe ended on May 8.

Three months later, in accordance with a secret agreement, the USSR declared war on Japan. In a series of swift moves against crumbling Japanese resistance, Soviet armies occupied most of Dongbei, northern Korea, the Kuril Islands, and the southern part of Sakhalin Island, which had been a Japanese possession. On the basis of these actions the USSR claimed a share in the victory over Japan.

E.5.

Post-War 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 United States 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 post-war 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 victorious powers temporarily designated four occupation zones. The eastern zone was assigned to the USSR. Berlin, surrounded by the Soviet zone, was divided into four sectors, and 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 to divide Eastern and parts of Central Europe from 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 labour of millions of German prisoners of war.

F.

The Cold War Begins

In its approach to post-war problems the Soviet government was motivated by an expansionist policy designed to enlarge the area ruled by Communists loyal to the USSR, to strengthen 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 signalled 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 United States and 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 United States and its allies, known as the Cold War.

F.1.

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 the rejection of Soviet control by Marshal Tito and Western economic aid. As a result, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform and Tito became a leading exponent of non-alignment in the Cold War. These developments alarmed the United States and Western European powers 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.

F.2.

Relations with China

Soviet relations with China during this period were conciliatory. In August 1945, the Chinese and Soviet governments concluded a treaty of friendship and alliance, granting the USSR economic concessions and defence facilities as previously agreed upon by the wartime Allies. Although the Soviet Union pledged to respect Chinese sovereignty in Dongbei, Soviet authorities stripped the region of nearly all of its industrial machinery and actively resisted efforts by the Chinese government to re-establish its authority there. Meanwhile, the arms taken from captured Japanese soldiers were given to the Chinese Communists. When the Soviet army eventually withdrew, all Dongbei fell to the Chinese Communists. Subsequently, the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949 altered the entire balance of power in Asia to the temporary advantage of the Soviet Union.

IV.

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.

A.

De-Stalinization

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 investigation...of honest and innocent Communists”; that he had not prepared adequate defences against the German invasion of June 1941, and that he had then mishandled the war effort, 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 de-Stalinization campaign, portraits were removed from public places, institutions and localities bearing his name were renamed, and textbooks were rewritten to deflate his reputation.

B.

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 centre of a new personality cult. 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 the victory in World War II.

C.

Khrushchev's Fall

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 autumn of that year, Khrushchev was especially ebullient and full of plans after extensive travel in and beyond the USSR. Then, suddenly, in October, he was toppled—relieved both of his party secretaryship and the premiership. The reasons for his ousting may have included unsatisfactory progress in agriculture and industry, and such foreign policy disasters 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 de-Stalinization. Some of his closest colleagues were also removed from office.

D.

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 pre-eminence. 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, late in 1982, he was succeeded as general secretary of the party by Yuri Andropov, former head of the Soviet secret police (KGB).

V.

Economic Developments

Soviet economic development after World War II followed lines worked out in 5-year plans and a 7-year plan (1959-1965), although the plans were sometimes not announced in full until they had been operating for a year or two.

A.

Agriculture

Collectivized 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. Unfavourable 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 labour caused by migration of rural youth 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 United States 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, labour-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 centres. Such measures, combined with good weather, resulted in record harvests in 1973, 1974, and 1976. Irrigation and reforestation made even the marginal lands of Kazakhstan remarkably productive. Nevertheless, agriculture remained a serious problem.

B.

Industry

Rapid industrialization had occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin's Five-year plans, eventually turning the country into the world's second industrial and military power. However, production of consumer goods had long lagged. 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 Khrushchev 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 centred on the fertilizer, plastics, and rubber industries.

C.

Management

Yevsey Liberman and other Soviet economists had advocated the introduction of some capitalist 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, transport, 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.

D.

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.

E.

Minerals

Of great importance for the growth of the Soviet economy was the increased development of Siberia, utilizing forced labour. The opening of vast 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 Railway, which runs north of the present Trans-Siberian Railway and thus at a safer distance from the Chinese border.

VI.

Cultural Developments

From the mid-20th century the Soviet government tried, within strict ideological confines, 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 all those who toed the party line. Special efforts were made to reach isolated areas where educational opportunities had been few. Instruction was in Russian or in one of the Soviet Union's many other languages. Non-literate peoples were provided with their own alphabets, dictionaries, and grammars. As a result, illiteracy (about 70 per cent in the Russian Empire) was almost entirely eliminated, and a large part of the population acquired a narrow political awareness of Communism (but heavily biased interpretations of capitalism), and the technical skills needed to develop a modern industrialized state.

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 (at the cost of safe disposal of nuclear waste) 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 1,100 spacecraft and numerous satellites.

Nor were the arts neglected. Unions were formed for communist writers, painters, and other creative people. Theatres and concert halls were built, and orchestras and theatre and dance companies sent on tour. Local clubs and palaces of culture brought politically didactic urban and folk arts to the general public, and the government encouraged thousands of amateur groups. Dissidents and their families, however, were harshly persecuted and often banished to Siberia or imprisoned in mental hospitals.

A.

State Control

The state insisted that all aspects of Soviet culture foster Communist society. This requirement did relatively little damage to science, although the government's vacillating attitude towards 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 towards music is less clear: The composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were both alternately in and out of favour. After the mid-1960s even jazz and twelve-tone music were offered lipservice. 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. In the 1920s Russian modern art experienced a golden age, but at Stalin's instigation Avant Garde literature and the paintings of Marc Chagall, and Kasimir Malevich, and Wassily Kandinsky among others were banned. The government accepted religious toleration in theory but was itself atheistic and opposed organized religion in practice. Religious services were restricted and believers were denied educational and professional advancement and were subjected to antireligious propaganda and imprisonment.

B.

Dissidence

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 de-Stalinization years from 1955 through 1964 was followed by a return to a more repressive policy, especially after the radical attempts at liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Hundreds of dissidents were dismissed, imprisoned, or sent to mental institutions or hard-labour 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 Gorky (now known as Nizhniy Novgorod), 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 emigrate 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.

VII.

Affairs Abroad

After World War II the Soviet Union had the closest relations with the Eastern European nations that bordered it, often referred to as “satellite” countries. 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 created further dependency by the economies of these nations on that of the USSR.

A.

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 per cent of Soviet trade was with the satellites. In 1954 the USSR granted a degree of economic 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.

A.1.

Polish and Hungarian Crises

Soviet control of the satellites was most seriously threatened in 1956, during the relaxation following de-Stalinization. Popular discontent and demonstrations in Poland in 1956 were followed by an enforced change of government in Poland and a “temporary” continuance of Soviet troops in Poland, cancellation of some Polish debts, and the granting of additional credits.

The Hungarian uprising later in the year was more serious. Demonstrations by workers and students for national independence led to the intervention of Soviet troops, which brutally subdued the independence movement, killing thousands and imprisoning many more, and the formation of a new puppet government under János Kádár. The USSR was condemned by the Western countries and by the United Nations, but for a long time afterwards it maintained a great degree of control in Hungary.

A.2.

Prague Spring

The next crisis, in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968, reflected the more relaxed Soviet system of review after 1960 and the pressure for economic change within the Czechoslovak Communist party, which was dismayed by the stagnant economy and sought to create “socialism with a human face”. Dissatisfaction and clamour for reform led peacefully and gradually to the replacement of Antonín Novotnýas head of the party and of the state by Alexander Dubček and Ludvík Svoboda, both Communists long loyal to the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders were alarmed by the “Prague Spring”—particularly by the ending of censorship and talk of closer economic relations with the West. Pressure was brought to bear in various ways, but when all other means failed, approximately 600,000 Soviet and other Warsaw Pact (except Romanian) troops were airlifted into Prague and occupied Czechoslovakia on the night of August 20, 1968. Passive resistance was united and most impressive, but the Soviet forces gradually won the day. Dubček was removed in April 1969, and the hated controls were reimposed.

The destruction of the dramatic reform movement in Czechoslovakia was reflected in tightened controls in the USSR and served to reassert Soviet control over all of Eastern Europe except Romania, Yugoslavia, and Albania. It weakened Communist parties outside the Soviet bloc, split the international Communist movement apart, alarmed the West, and delayed all negotiations on disarmament. From the Soviet point of view, it improved the Soviet position in the contest for Europe. By endorsing the territorial status quo in Europe, the Conference on Security and Cooperation (now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Helsinki, Finland, 1975, apparently sanctioned Soviet authority in Eastern Europe. The USSR played a major behind-the-scenes role in halting a drive towards free trade unions and increased democracy in Poland in the early 1980s.

B.

Relations with China

In 1949 the Soviet Union fully recognized the Communist government of China under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), became allied with it, and continued to demand that it be seated in the UN in place of the government of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan. A 30-year treaty was signed in 1950, including provision for Soviet loans to China at 1 per cent interest. Both countries supported North Korea in the Korean War (1950-1953). At the end of the 1950s relations still seemed close, and Soviet trade with China reached a value of $2 billion annually. In the 1960s, however, relations between the two countries gradually deteriorated. On the surface was an ideological disagreement over the interpretation of Marxism, especially with regard to revolutions in the developing countries. Underneath, however, was the old-fashioned rivalry and mutual fear of two empires, the leaders of which, despite their vaunted communism, were intensely nationalistic, jealously guarded every inch of their vast territories, and strove for leadership in the rest of the Communist world. This rivalry surfaced in the Soviet refusal after 1959 to assist the Chinese in developing their nuclear power, in Chinese resentment that the Soviet Union still retained territories that had been considered Chinese before a series of treaties in 1858 and 1860, and in the perhaps inevitable squabbling between neighbours sharing a long common border in Dongbei. As it grew in intensity, the conflict even threatened a rift in the peace between the two countries. The clashes of border brigades in 1969 cast a new shadow over all Soviet policies. The 1972 visit to China by US president Richard M. Nixon further alarmed the USSR at the possibility of a realignment of power. Despite Soviet efforts to calm relations after Mao's death in 1976, Soviet-Chinese rivalry increased. The Chinese encouraged the East European states to seek more independence, recognized the European Common Market, and turned towards the West for military and economic aid. Sino-Soviet talks on improving mutual relations, begun in late 1979, were broken off in early 1980, but were resumed in 1982.

C.

Relations with Other Asian Nations

The USSR in 1950 recognized the Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. In 1954 it participated in the Geneva Agreement that divided the country into North and South Vietnam, and it continued to support the Communist north. As the Vietnam War escalated during the 1960s, the USSR came into conflict with the United States. After the North Vietnamese victory, the Soviet Union still supported reunited Vietnam in its conflict with China.

Soviet relations with other Asian countries were both conciliatory and aggressive. Premier Kosygin rendered an outstanding service to world peace in 1966 by mediating a new phase of the quarrel between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. In the 1971 Indian-Pakistani conflict that resulted in the formation of the state of Bangladesh, the USSR supported victorious India, while both China and the United States sided with Pakistan. Despite normal relations with Japan, a peace treaty ending World War II was never signed because of the Soviet Union's refusal to return to Japan the strategically placed Kuril Islands acquired in 1945.

In December 1979 the USSR, in an attempt to shore up a faltering Marxist government, sent a large military force across the border into Afghanistan, occupying the country. Amid condemnation from the rest of the world, the Soviet troops fought to quell nationalist resistance and dug in, apparently for a long duration. Although fighting continued in 1982, a new Asian satellite seemed to have joined the Soviet orbit.

D.

Penetration of Africa

Soviet attempts to influence African states suffered two notable setbacks in the 1960s. In the Congo (now Zaïre) Soviet-supported Premier Patrice Lumumba was killed in an uprising in 1961, and in Ghana in 1966 Kwame Nkrumah and his government were overthrown and Soviet technicians were expelled. In the 1970s, however, with the aid of Cuban troops, the USSR placed friends in power in Angola and assisted Ethiopia in driving back Somalians. It supported the anti-government Patriotic Front in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and similar groups in South Africa. These and other developments alarmed the West as a new form of Soviet imperialism and a new approach to increasing Soviet power in the Middle East.

Soviet relations with Egypt were close in the 1950s and 1960s. The USSR supported Egypt when it nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, helped it build the Aswān High Dam, and backed it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War: in 1971 the two countries signed a 15-year treaty of friendship. The following year, however, Egypt ordered all Soviet military advisers out of the country. Soviet criticism of the peacemaking visit by the Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977 further alienated Egypt. In December 1977 Sadat ordered the Soviet Union to close its consulates and cease all cultural activities. Soviet advisers were also ordered to leave Sudan and Somalia.

E.

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.

F.

Relations with the United States

Soviet relations with the United States after World War II were marked by alternating periods of crisis and cooperation.

In 1962 the USSR and United States clashed over Cuba. The USSR had maintained close relations with Fidel Castro's government, promising help in case of attack by the United States. In 1962, when the USSR provided Cuban bases with offensive missiles, and US 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. The influence increased as a result of the cooperation between Soviet and Cuban advisers and soldiers in Africa and Asia after 1976.

F.1.

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 strength, 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 Britain banning all nuclear tests except those underground. It also joined the United States 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.

F.2.

Détente

The Soviet Union pursued an active foreign policy backed by steadily increasing military strength, but it also showed a marked drive towards détente with the West, especially the United States. In May 1972, President Nixon visited the Soviet Union. Soviet-US agreements included cooperation on health research, environmental protection, science and technology, space ventures, avoidance of incidents at sea, and arms limitations. Following these came settlement of the Soviet World War II lend-lease debt, a 3-year trade pact, and cultural exchange programmes.

Efforts to reach a new SALT agreement after 1975 were hampered by such issues as Soviet and East European repression of dissidents, the Soviet involvement in Angola and other African states, and continued Soviet support of the Arab cause against Israel. Despite these sources of tension, Soviet and US negotiators reached an agreement on a new SALT treaty in May 1979, and Brezhnev met with US President Jimmy Carter in Vienna for a formal signing one month later. The Soviet armed intervention in Afghanistan in December of that year, however, doomed ratification of the accord by the US Congress.

US-Soviet relations worsened during the early 1980s. The United States condemned the Soviet role in the suppression of dissidence in Poland and the September 1983 shooting down of a Korean Air Lines civilian aircraft in Soviet airspace.

VIII.

Gorbachev Era

Brezhnev died in November 1982. His successor as state president and Communist party general secretary, Yuri V. Andropov, succumbed to prolonged illness in February 1984. Andropov's successor, Konstantin Chernenko, who died after only 13 months in office, was followed in March 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev.

A.

Glasnost and Perestroika

After consolidating his power by changing the Politburo membership, Gorbachev launched a campaign aimed at reforming Soviet society. His agenda called for perestroika (Russian, “restructuring”) of the nation's economy and glasnost (Russian, “openness”) in political and cultural affairs. At a conference of the Communist party held in late June 1988, Gorbachev proposed a series of constitutional reforms that would shift power from the party to popularly elected legislatures, reduce the party's role in local economic management, and greatly increase the powers of the presidency. Three months later, Andrey A. Gromyko retired as state president (a post he had held since 1985), and Gorbachev assumed the office. In March 1989, Soviet voters took part in their first nationwide competitive election since 1917, choosing the newly reconstituted Congress of People's Deputies: the congress convened in May to select the Supreme Soviet and to elect Gorbachev to a 5-year presidential term. Complicating the process of domestic economic reform were, in April 1986, a serious accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which caused significant environmental damage and revealed major deficiencies in the Soviet nuclear programme; and, in December 1988, an earthquake in Armenia that left more than 25,000 dead and at least 400,000 homeless.

B.

Foreign Policy Initiatives

An agreement providing for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was reached in April 1988. Official figures issued in May indicated that 13,310 Soviet soldiers had been killed and 35,478 injured in the fighting. The withdrawal was completed by February 1989; in October, Soviet leaders acknowledged that the intervention in Afghanistan had “violated the norms of proper behaviour”.

Between 1985 and 1991, Gorbachev held a series of summit conferences with US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. At a meeting with Reagan in Reykjavík, Iceland, in October 1986, the two leaders exchanged bold new arms reduction proposals, but negotiations broke down over the Soviet demand for limitations on research and testing of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The two presidents signed an agreement in December 1987 to eliminate medium-range and certain shorter-range missiles. In May 1990, Gorbachev and Bush signed a treaty to end production and reduce stockpiles of chemical weapons, and in July 1991 the two men signed an accord requiring substantial cuts in strategic nuclear weapons.

Gorbachev's initiatives in other foreign policy areas were equally striking. In December 1988, at the UN General Assembly, he announced unilateral reductions in conventional forces, notably in Eastern Europe and along the Sino-Soviet border. During Gorbachev's visit to Beijing in May 1989, China and the USSR agreed to resume normal relations after a 30-year rift. At a meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome in December, Gorbachev promised that the Soviet Union would allow full religious freedom, and the USSR and the Vatican agreed to establish diplomatic ties. Relations with Israel also improved dramatically, as the USSR relaxed emigration restrictions on Soviet Jews. After August 1990, with tensions rising in the Persian Gulf, the USSR generally supported the US-led effort to use economic and military pressure to force Iraq to give up Kuwait.

C.

Communism in Crisis

Among the most dramatic departures from past Soviet policy was the refusal of the USSR to intervene in Eastern Europe as, between 1989 and 1991, reform movements ousted Communist governments in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia; Communist East Germany dissolved and became part of the Federal Republic of Germany; and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, two cornerstones of Soviet foreign policy, disbanded. Nor was Soviet Communism immune to the forces that brought down the Eastern European regimes. In February 1990, with the Soviet economy rapidly deteriorating, the Communist party agreed to give up its monopoly on political power. In March, as Gorbachev became executive president, insurgents scored significant gains in local elections. Gorbachev had lost considerable public support for his domestic policies. On March 11, Lithuania declared itself a sovereign state, defying Moscow's sanctions. Nationalist and independence movements also were active in the other republics, and outbreaks of ethnic violence were increasingly common. In November Gorbachev again sought to augment his presidential powers and implement political and economic reforms.

Communist hard-liners, who included many of the Soviet government's top officials, attempted a coup in August 1991, placing Gorbachev under house arrest and moving to reimpose centralized Communist control. In three days, the reformers, led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, crushed the coup and began to dismantle the party apparatus. With the USSR on the verge of collapse, the Congress of People's Deputies agreed on September 5 to establish a transitional government in which a State Council, headed by Gorbachev and including the presidents of participating republics, exercised emergency powers. The next day the council recognized the full independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Increasingly, Yeltsin's influence eclipsed that of Gorbachev, and the Russian government assumed the powers the Soviet government in Moscow had previously exercised. On December 21, the USSR formally ceased to exist, as 11 of the remaining 12 republics—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (renamed Belarus), Kazakhstan, Kirghiziya (renamed Kyrgyzstan), Moldavia (renamed Moldova), Russia, Tadzhikistan (renamed Tajikistan), Turkmenia (renamed Turkmenistan), Ukraine, and Uzbekistan—agreed to form the loosely defined Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, and the Soviet parliament acknowledged dissolution of the USSR on December 26 (see Communism, Collapse of).