The USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991. The collapse was influenced by a number of reasons and circumstances of a political nature, today there are many versions of the collapse of a powerful state in the past.
The mighty power that had held out on the world stage for more than two-thirds of a century fell, or, to use the language of Ancient Russia, fell into territorial fragmentation. The "Belovezhskaya agreement" of 1991 opened a new page, both in the history of the Russian Federation and in the annals of the rest of the former Soviet republics, which at the time of the collapse, there were 15, and which began to function as independent states. A complete list of countries united "under the auspices" Soviet Union, you can get from our article - .
During the existence of the union, each republic retained an autonomous position and had its own capital. Below will be short review each of them, as well as a small informative description of the official main city.
- RSFSR - Moscow - today is the capital of the Russian Federation. Included in the top ten world cities in terms of population
- Azerbaijan SSR - Baku - the most Big city in the Caucasus, the largest port of the Caspian Sea
- Armenian SSR - Yerevan - the political, scientific and cultural center of Armenia.
- Byelorussian SSR - Minsk - the city has the status of a hero city. The capital of Belarus today houses the headquarters of the CIS, an organization designed to regulate relations between the former Soviet republics.
- Georgian SSR - Tbilisi - the city was founded in the 5th century AD. The strategic location of the capital between Europe and Asia has more than once made Tbilisi a bone of contention between different parts of the Caucasus.
- Kazakh SSR - Alma-Ata - the largest city, known as the "Southern Capital"
- The Kirghiz SSR - Frunze, the Kyrgyz name is Bishkek, the city is located at the foothills of the Tien Shan.
- The Latvian SSR - Riga - the largest Baltic city today with a population of over 600 thousand inhabitants. The historical center of the capital is included in the UNESCO list.
- Lithuanian SSR - Vilnius - for many centuries was the leading city of the Commonwealth.
- The Moldavian SSR - Chisinau - has a special status - a municipality in the administrative division of Moldova.
- Tajik SSR - Dushanbe - in 2009 the city was declared the capital of Islamic culture of Tajikistan.
- Turkmen SSR - Ashgabat - today the city is a separate administrative unit of Turkmenistan with the status of a region.
- The Uzbek SSR - Tashkent - today is one of the five most populated cities in the CIS, with a population of over 2 million people.
- Ukrainian SSR - Kyiv - a hero city, known in history as the center Kievan Rus due to which even today it is called the "Mother of Russian cities".
- Estonian SSR - Tallinn - today a major tourist destination in the Baltic states, during the entry of Estonia into the Russian Empire, the capital was called Revel.
These cities were not on the maps. Their residents signed non-disclosure agreements. Before you - the most secret cities of the USSR.
Under the heading "secret"
Soviet ZATOs received their status in connection with the placement there of objects of state importance related to the energy, military or space spheres. It was practically impossible for an ordinary citizen to get there, and not only because of the strictest access control, but also because of the secrecy of the location of the settlement. Residents of closed cities were ordered to keep their place of residence in strict secrecy, and even more so not to disclose information about secret objects.
Such cities were not on the map, they did not have a unique name and most often bore the name of the regional center with the addition of a number, for example, Krasnoyarsk-26 or Penza-19. Unusual in ZATO was the numbering of houses and schools. It began with a large number, continuing the numbering of the settlement to which the inhabitants of the secret city were "assigned".
The population of some ZATOs, due to the proximity of dangerous objects, was included in the risk group. There have also been disasters. Thus, a large leak of radioactive waste that occurred in 1957 in Chelyabinsk-65 endangered the lives of at least 270 thousand people.
However, living in a closed city had its advantages. As a rule, the level of amenities there was noticeably higher than in many cities of the country: this applies to the service sector, social conditions, and everyday life. Such cities were very well supplied, they could get scarce goods, and the crime rate there was practically reduced to zero. For the costs of "secrecy" in addition to the basic salary of the residents of ZATOs, an allowance was charged.
Zagorsk-6 and Zagorsk-7
Sergiev Posad, which until 1991 was called Zagorsk, is known not only for its unique monasteries and temples, but also for closed towns. The Virological Center of the Research Institute of Microbiology was located in Zagorsk-6, and the Central Institute of Physics and Technology of the USSR Ministry of Defense was located in Zagorsk-7.
Behind the official names, the essence is a little lost: in the first, in Soviet times, they were engaged in the development of bacteriological, and in the second, radioactive weapons.
Once in 1959, a group of guests from India brought smallpox to the USSR, and our scientists decided to use this fact for the good of their homeland. In a short time, a bacteriological weapon based on the variola virus was created, and its strain called "India-1" was placed in Zagorsk-6.
Later, endangering themselves and the population, research institute scientists developed deadly weapons based on South American and African viruses. By the way, it was here that tests were carried out with the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus.
It was difficult to get a job in Zagorsk-6, at least in a “civilian” specialty - an impeccable purity of the biography of the applicant and his relatives was required almost up to the 7th knee. This is not surprising, since there have been many attempts to get at our bacteriological weapons.
The military stores of Zagorsk-7, which were easier to get to, always had a good selection of goods. Residents from neighboring villages noted the striking contrast with the half-empty shelves of local stores. Sometimes they made lists in order to centrally purchase products. But if officially it was not possible to get into the town, then they climbed over the fence.
The status of a closed city was removed from Zagorsk-7 on January 1, 2001, and Zagorsk-6 is closed to this day.
Arzamas-16
After the use of atomic weapons by the Americans, the question arose of the first Soviet atomic bomb. They decided to build a secret facility for its development called KB-11 on the site of the village of Sarov, which later turned into Arzamas-16 (other names are Kremlyov, Arzamas-75, Gorky-130).
The secret city, built on the border of the Gorky region and the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was promptly placed on a heightened security regime and surrounded by two rows of barbed wire along the entire perimeter and a control strip laid between them. Until the mid-1950s, everyone lived here in an atmosphere of extreme secrecy. Employees of KB-11, including family members, could not leave the restricted area even during the holidays. An exception was made only for business trips.
Later, when the city grew, residents had the opportunity to travel to the regional center on a specialized bus, and also to host relatives after they received a special pass.
Residents of Arzamas-16, unlike many fellow citizens, learned what real socialism is.
The average salary, which was always paid on time, was about 200 rubles there. The shelves of shops in the closed city were bursting with abundance: a dozen varieties of sausages and cheeses, red and black caviar, and other delicacies. Residents of neighboring Gorky never dreamed of such a thing.
Now the Sarov nuclear center, the former Arzamas-16, is still a closed city.
Sverdlovsk-45
Another "born by order" city was built around plant No. 814, which was engaged in uranium enrichment. At the foot of Mount Shaitan, north of Sverdlovsk, prisoners of the Gulag and, according to some sources, Moscow students, have been working tirelessly for several years.
Sverdlovsk-45 was immediately conceived as a city, and therefore was built very compactly. It was distinguished by orderliness and characteristic "squareness" of buildings: it was impossible to get lost there. “Little Peter,” one of the guests of the city once put it, although to others his spiritual provinciality reminded patriarchal Moscow.
By Soviet standards, they lived very well in Svedlovsk-45, although it was inferior in terms of supply to the same Arzamas-16. There was never a crowd and a stream of cars, and the air was always clean. The inhabitants of the closed city constantly had conflicts with the population of the neighboring Lower Tura, who envied their well-being. It used to be that they would watch for the townspeople leaving through the watch and beat them, solely out of envy.
Interestingly, if one of the residents of Sverdlovsk-45 committed a crime, then there was no way back to the city for him, despite the fact that his family remained in it.
The secret objects of the city often attracted the attention of foreign intelligence. So, in 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down near him, and its pilot was captured.
Svedlovsk-45, now Lesnoy, is now closed to casual visitors.
Peaceful
Mirny, at first a military town in the Arkhangelsk region, was transformed into a closed city in 1966 due to the nearby Plesetsk test cosmodrome. But the level of secrecy in Mirny turned out to be lower than in many other Soviet ZATOs: the city was not surrounded by barbed wire, and documents were checked only on access roads.
Due to relative accessibility, there were many cases when a lost mushroom picker or an illegal immigrant who entered the city for scarce goods suddenly appeared near secret objects. If no malicious intent was noticed in the actions of such people, they were quickly released.
Many residents of Mirny call the Soviet period nothing more than a fairy tale. “A sea of toys, beautiful clothes and shoes,” one of the residents of the city recalls her visits to the Children's World. During the Soviet era, Mirny gained the reputation of the “city of carriages”. The fact is that every summer graduates of military academies came there, and in order to cling to a prosperous place, they quickly got married and had children.
Mirny retains its status as a closed city even now.
USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union for short)
- a former state that existed on the territory of Eastern Europe and Asia.
The USSR was a superpower-empire (in a figurative sense), a stronghold of socialism in the world.
The country existed from 1922 to 1991.
The Soviet Union occupied one sixth of the total surface area of the Earth. It was the most big country in the world.
The capital of the USSR was the city of Moscow.
There were many large cities in the USSR: Moscow, Leningrad (modern St. Petersburg), Sverdlovsk (modern Yekaterinburg), Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Ufa, Kuibyshev (modern Samara), Gorky (modern Nizhny Novgorod), Omsk, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Saratov, Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkov, Minsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Baku, Alma-Ata.
The population of the USSR before its collapse was about 250 million people.
The Soviet Union had land borders with Afghanistan, Hungary, Iran, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Finland, and Czechoslovakia.
The length of the land borders of the Soviet Union was 62,710 kilometers.
By sea, the USSR bordered on the United States, Sweden and Japan.
The dimensions of the former empire of socialism were impressive:
a) length - more than 10,000 km from the extreme geographical points (from the Curonian Spit in the Kaliningrad region to Ratmanov Island in the Bering Strait);
b) width - more than 7,200 km from the extreme geographical points (from Cape Chelyuskin, Taimyr Autonomous Okrug, Krasnoyarsk Territory to the city of Kushka, Mary Region, Turkmen SSR).
The shores of the USSR were washed by twelve seas: Kara, Barents, Baltic, Laptev, East Siberian, Bering, Okhotsk, Japanese, Black, Caspian, Azov, Aral.
There were many mountain ranges and systems in the USSR: the Carpathians, the Crimean Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Pamir Range, the Tien Shan Range, the Sayan Range, the Sikhote-Alin Range, the Ural Mountains.
The Soviet Union had the largest and deepest lakes in the world: Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, Lake Baikal (the deepest in the world).
On the territory of the Soviet Union there were as many as five climatic zones.
On the territory of the USSR there were areas where there was a polar day and a polar night for four months a year and only polar moss grew in summer, and areas where there was never snow all year round and where palm trees and citrus trees grew.
The Soviet Union had eleven time zones. The first zone differed from universal time by two hours, and the last by as much as thirteen hours.
The administrative-territorial division of the USSR competed in its complexity only with the modern administrative-territorial division of Great Britain. The administrative units of the first level were the union republics: Russia (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), Belarus (Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic), Ukraine (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), Kazakhstan (Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), Moldova (Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic), Georgia (Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic), Armenia (Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), Turkmenistan (Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic), Tajikistan (Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic), Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic), Uzbekistan (Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic), Lithuania (Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic), Latvia (Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic), Estonia (Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic ).
The republics were divided into administrative units of the second level - autonomous republics, autonomous districts, autonomous regions, territories and regions. In turn, autonomous republics, autonomous okrugs, autonomous regions, territories and regions were divided into administrative units of the third level - into districts, and those, in turn, were divided into administrative units of the fourth level - city, village and settlement councils. Some republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Moldova) were immediately divided into second-level administrative units - into districts.
Russia (RSFSR) had the most complex administrative-territorial division. It included:
a) cities of union subordination - Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol;
b) autonomous Soviet socialist republics - the Bashkir ASSR, the Buryat ASSR, the Dagestan ASSR, the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR, the Kalmyk ASSR, the Karelian ASSR, the Komi ASSR, the Mari ASSR, the Mordovian ASSR, the North Ossetian ASSR, the Tatar ASSR, the Tuva ASSR, the Udmurt ASSR, Chechen-Ingush ASSR, Chuvash ASSR, Yakut ASSR;
c) autonomous regions - Adygei Autonomous District, Gorno-Altai Autonomous District, Jewish Autonomous District, Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous District, Khakass Autonomous District;
d) regions - Amur, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Gorky, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kalinin, Kaluga, Kamchatka, Kemerovo, Kirov, Kostroma, Kuibyshev, Kurgan, Kursk, Leningrad, Lipetsk Magadan, Moscow, Murmansk, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Orel, Penza, Perm, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan Saratov, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tambov, Tomsk, Tula, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chita, Yaroslavl:
e) Autonomous Okrugs: Aginsky Buryat AO, Komi-Permyatsky AO, Koryaksky AO, Nenets AO, Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenetsky) AO, Ust-Ordynsky Buryat AO, Khanty-Mansiysk AO, Chukotsky AO, Evenki AO, Yamalo-Nenets AO.
f) territories - Altai, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Primorsky, Stavropol, Khabarovsk.
Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR) included only regions. It included: Vinnitsa. Volyn, Voroshilovgrad (modern Lugansk), Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Transcarpathian, Zaporozhye, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovograd, Crimean (until 1954 was part of the RSFSR), Lvov, Nikolaev, Odessa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil , Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv regions.
Belarus (BSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Brest, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, Mogilev, Vitebsk regions.
Kazakhstan (KazSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Aktobe, Alma-Ata, East Kazakhstan, Guryev, Dzhambul, Dzhezkazgan, Karaganda, Kzyl-Orda, Kokchetav, Kustanai, Mangyshlak, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk, Taldy-Kurgan, Turgay, Ural, Tselinograd , Chimkent region.
Turkmenistan (TurSSR) included five regions: Chardzhous, Ashgabat, Krasnovodsk, Mary, Tashauz;
Uzbekistan (UzSSR) included one autonomous republic (Karakalpak ASSR), the city of republican subordination Tashkent and regions: Tashkent, Ferghana, Andijan, Namangan, Syrdarya, Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khorezm.
Georgia (GrSSR) consisted of the city of republican subordination of Tbilisi, two autonomous republics (Abkhaz ASSR and Adjara ASSR) and one autonomous region (South Ossetian Autonomous Region).
Kyrgyzstan (KyrSSR) consisted of only two regions (Osh and Naryn) and the city of republican subordination Frunze.
Tajikistan (Tad SSR) consisted of one autonomous region (Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Okrug), three regions (Kulyab, Kurgan-Tyubinsk, Leninabad) and the city of republican subordination - Dushanbe.
Azerbaijan (AzSSR) consisted of one autonomous republic (Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), one autonomous region (Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region) and the city of republican subordination Baku.
Armenia (Armenian SSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Yerevan.
Moldova (MSSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Chisinau.
Lithuania (Lithuanian SSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Vilnius.
Latvia (LatSSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Riga.
Estonia (ESSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Tallinn.
The USSR has gone through a difficult historical path.
The history of the empire of socialism begins with the period when autocracy collapsed in tsarist Russia. This happened in February 1917, when the Provisional Government was formed in place of the defeated monarchy.
The interim government failed to restore order in the former empire, and the ongoing World War I and the failures of the Russian army only contributed to the further escalation of unrest.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Provisional Government, the Bolshevik Party, headed by V.I. Lenin, organized an armed uprising in Petrograd at the end of October 1917, which led to the liquidation of the power of the Provisional Government and the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd.
The October Revolution led to an escalation of violence in a number of regions of the former Russian Empire. A bloody Civil War began. The fire of war covered the whole of Ukraine, the western regions of Belarus, the Urals, Siberia, Far East, Caucasus and Turkestan. For about four years, Bolshevik Russia waged a bloody war against the supporters of the restoration of the old regime. Part of the territories of the former Russian Empire were lost, and some countries (Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) declared their sovereignty and unwillingness to accept the new Soviet power.
Lenin pursued the single goal of creating the USSR - the creation of a powerful state capable of resisting any manifestation of counter-revolution. And such a power was created on December 29, 1922 - Lenin's Decree on the formation of the USSR was signed.
Immediately after the formation of the new state, it initially included only four republics: Russia (RSFSR), Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR), Belarus (BSSR) and Transcaucasia (Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic(ZSFSR)).
All organs of state power in the USSR came under the strict control of the Communist Party. Any decision on the spot was not made without the approval of the party leadership.
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was the highest authority in the USSR during Lenin's time.
After the death of Lenin, a struggle for power in the country flared up in the highest echelons of power. With equal success, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky,
G.I. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev, A.I. Rykov. The most cunning of all was the future dictator-tyrant of the totalitarian USSR - I. V. Stalin. Initially, in order to destroy some of his competitors in the struggle for power, Stalin teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the so-called "troika".
At the XIII Congress, the question was decided who would become the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the country after the death of Lenin. Zinoviev and Kamenev managed to rally around themselves the majority of the Communists and most of them voted for I.V. Stalin. So the country has a new leader.
Having headed the USSR, Stalin first of all began to strengthen his power and get rid of his recent supporters. This practice was soon adopted by the entire Stalinist environment. Now, after the elimination of Trotsky, Stalin took Bukharin and Rykov as his allies in order to jointly oppose Zinoviev and Kamenev.
This struggle of the new dictator continued until 1929. This year, all of Stalin's strong competitors were exterminated; there were no more competitors to him in the struggle for power in the country.
In parallel with the inner-party struggle, until 1929, Lenin's NEP (New Economic Policy) was carried out in the country. During these years, private entrepreneurship was not yet completely banned in the country.
In 1924, a new Soviet ruble was put into circulation in the USSR.
In 1925, at the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a course was set for the collectivization and industrialization of the entire country. The first five-year plan is being developed. The dispossession of lands began, millions of kulaks (wealthy landowners) were exiled to Siberia and the Far East, or were driven from good fertile lands and received in return junk lands that were not suitable for agriculture.
Forced collectivization and dispossession caused an unprecedented famine in 1932-1933. Ukraine, the Volga region, Kuban, and other regions of the country were starving. Cases of theft in the fields have become more frequent. The notorious law was adopted (popularly called the "Law of Three Spikelets"), according to which those caught even with a handful of grain were assigned long prison terms and a long exile in the regions of the Far North, Siberia and the Far East.
1937 was marked by a year of mass repressions. The repressions primarily affected the leadership of the Red Army, which seriously weakened the country's defense in the future and allowed the army of fascist Germany to reach almost unhindered almost to Moscow itself.
The mistakes of Stalin and his leadership cost the country dearly. However, there were also positive moments. As a result of industrialization, the country has taken the second place in the world in terms of industrial production.
In August 1939, just before the start of World War II, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact and the division of Eastern Europe (the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).
After the Second World War began, the USSR and Germany divided the territory of Poland between them. The USSR included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and later Bessarabia (became part of the Moldavian SSR). A year later, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were included in the USSR, which were also turned into union republics.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany, violating the non-aggression pact, began to bomb Soviet cities from the air. Hitler's Wehrmacht crossed the border. The Great Patriotic War began. The main production facilities were evacuated to the Far East, Siberia and the Urals, and the population was being evacuated. At the same time, the full mobilization of the male population into the active army was carried out.
At the initial stage of the war, the strategic mistakes made by the Stalinist leadership in previous years affected. There were few new weapons in the army, and what
there was, inferior in its characteristics to the German one. The Red Army retreated, many people were taken prisoner. The headquarters threw more and more new units into battle, but this did not have much success - the Germans stubbornly advanced towards Moscow. In some sectors of the front, the distance to the Kremlin was no more than 20 kilometers, and on Red Square, according to eyewitnesses of those times, artillery cannonade and the rumble of tanks and aircraft were already heard. German generals could observe the center of Moscow through their binoculars.
Only in December 1941, the Red Army went on the offensive and pushed the Germans back 200-300 kilometers to the west. However, by the spring, the Nazi command managed to recover from the defeat and changed the direction of the main attack. Now Hitler's main goal was Stalingrad, which opened up a further advance to the Caucasus, to the oil fields in the region of Baku and Grozny.
In the summer of 1942, the Germans came close to Stalingrad. And by the end of autumn, fighting was already going on in the city itself. However, the German Wehrmacht failed to advance further than Stalingrad. In the middle of winter, a powerful offensive of the Red Army began, a 100,000-strong group of Germans under the command of Field Marshal Paulus was captured, and Paulus himself was captured. The German offensive failed, moreover, it ended in complete defeat.
Hitler planned to take the last revenge in the summer of 1943 in the Kursk region. The famous tank battle took place near Prokhorovka, in which a thousand tanks from each side took part. The Battle of Kursk was lost again and from that moment the Red Army began a rapid advance to the west, freeing more and more new territories.
In 1944, all of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus were liberated. The Red Army reached the state border of the USSR and rushed to Europe, to Berlin.
In 1945, the Red Army liberated most of the countries of Eastern Europe from the Nazis and in May 1945 entered Berlin. The war ended with the complete victory of the USSR and its allies.
In 1945 Transcarpathia became part of the USSR. A new Transcarpathian region was formed.
After the war, the country was again gripped by famine. Factories and plants did not work, schools and hospitals were destroyed. The first five post-war years were very difficult for the country, and only in the early fifties did the situation in the country of the Soviets begin to improve.
In 1949, the atomic bomb was invented in the USSR as a symmetrical response to the US nuclear domination attempt in the world. Relations with the United States worsen, the Cold War begins.
In March 1953, JV Stalin dies. The era of Stalinism in the country ends. The so-called "Khrushchev thaw" is coming. At the next party congress, Khrushchev sharply criticized the former Stalinist regime. Tens of thousands of political prisoners are released from numerous camps. The mass rehabilitation of the repressed begins.
In 1957, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR.
In 1961, the world's first manned aircraft was launched in the USSR. spaceship with the first cosmonaut - Yuri Gagarin.
In the time of Khrushchev, in contrast to the created Western countries The Warsaw Pact Organization was created by the NATO bloc - a military alliance of the countries of Eastern Europe that embarked on the socialist path of development.
After Brezhnev came to power in the USSR, the first signs of stagnation began to appear. The growth of industrial production slowed down. The first signs of party corruption began to appear in the country. The Brezhnev leadership, and even Brezhnev himself, did not realize that the country was facing the need for fundamental changes both in politics, and in ideology, and in the economy.
With the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the so-called "perestroika" began. A course was taken for the wholesale eradication of domestic drunkenness, for the development of private
entrepreneurship. However, all the measures taken did not give positive results - in the late eighties it became clear that the huge empire of socialism had cracked and was beginning to fall apart, and the final collapse was only a matter of time. In the union republics, especially in the Baltic states and Ukraine, a massive increase in nationalist sentiment began, associated with the declaration of independence and separation from the USSR.
The first impetus for the collapse of the USSR was the bloody events in Lithuania. This republic was the first of all the Union republics to declare its withdrawal from the USSR. Then Lithuania was supported by Latvia and Estonia, which also declared their sovereignty. Events in these two Baltic republics developed in a more peaceful way.
Then Transcaucasia began to seethe. Another hot spot has emerged - Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia announced the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan started a blockade in response. A war began that lasted for five years, now the conflict is frozen, but tensions between the two countries remain.
Around the same time, Georgia separated from the USSR. A new conflict begins on the territory of this country - with Abkhazia, which wished to secede from Georgia and become a sovereign country.
In August 1991, a putsch begins in Moscow. The so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) was created. It was the last attempt to save the dying USSR. The coup failed, Gorbachev was actually removed from power by Yeltsin. Immediately after the failure of the coup Ukraine, Kazakhstan, republics Central Asia and Moldova declare their independence and are proclaimed sovereign states. Belarus and Russia are the latest to declare their sovereignty.
In December 1991, a meeting of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, held in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus, stated that the USSR as a state no longer exists and annulled Lenin's decree on the formation of the USSR. An agreement was signed to establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.
So the empire of socialism ceased to exist, not having lived only one year before its 70th anniversary.
In Scandinavian sagas Ancient Russia, not yet experienced a pogrom Tatar-Mongol invasion, was called Gardarikia - the country of cities. Today the Soviet Union is rightly called the country of new cities. Next to the veterans - Novgorod, Kyiv, Moscow, Minsk, Yerevan, Samarkand and the like - young cities are growing. Now more than half of all cities in the USSR were formed after 1917. Their emergence took place in two ways: by maturation from rural settlements and by creation in a clean place.
Cities that arose in a clean place started from scratch. Their names - Magnitogorsk, Komsomolsk, Norilsk, Angarsk, Bratsk, Rustavi, Sumgait... - sound like a hymn to selfless labor.
The emergence of new cities is natural, since it is associated with the development of new areas and new resources. After all, old cities most often cannot be miners due to their remoteness from mineral deposits.
In addition, the actions of urban planners are difficult in them. With the help of new reference cities, we kind of look into the future.
The birth of the city is a significant event. Previously, when it was laid, they fired from cannons. Nowadays, it is customary to erect a memorial stone with an inscription in honor of this. Many cities that arose in the pre-war five-year plans began with tents. This, for example, is reminiscent of the monument to the first tent, installed in Magnitogorsk. Now times are different: the cities of Novaya Kakhovka and Volzhsky immediately received capital development, Zelenograd near Moscow does not know barracks.
Between the two population censuses - 1959 and 1970 - exactly 11 years. During this time, 274 new names appeared in the lists of cities. Dozens of settlements, having passed the stage of an urban-type settlement, as if having successfully completed their "candidate experience", entered the number of cities. The name of some "newcomers" sometimes betrays their rural origin: Sergeevka, Zimogorye, Nosovka, Alekseevka, Berezovka, Snegirevka, Chernushka, Zhukovka, Kovylkino, Shemonaikha ... Khutor Mikhailovsky - the city of Friendship.
Among the new cities there are those experiencing a rebirth. For example, the quiet, verdant Oster in the Chernihiv region in 1961 again became a city, and its first birth dates back to 1008; then, under Vladimir Monomakh, it was known as a formidable fortress. But perhaps the most famous of these cities is Surgut, which was in the XVI century. an active city on the main route from the capital Siberian Tobolsk to the east to the legendary Mangazeya, Tomsk, Yeniseisk, Irkutsk and played an outstanding role in the era of the annexation of Siberia. But since the middle of the XVII century. it discovered its economic uselessness and ceased to be a city two centuries later. Nowadays, with the discovery of West Siberian oil, Surgut has bright prospects. The Ust-Balyk - Tyumen - Omsk oil pipeline begins nearby, the railway from the city of Tobolsk goes here, making its way through the forest jungle and swampy swamps.
Among the young cities there are also those that have grown out of ancient industrial centers, which for decades, and sometimes for centuries, lived as a factory or plant. One of them is Abaza, which became a city in 1966. This is an old settlement that arose in 1867 at the Abakan Metallurgical Plant. His name Abaza was formed from the first syllables of the name "Abakan Plant".
The professions of the new cities are varied. Most of them start their lives as industrial centers. Especially many among them are the so-called resource cities, the location of which is determined by the geography of resources. Therefore, some of them climb high into the mountains, others cuddle up to the sea coasts, others bravely step into the taiga or into the sultry desert.
Many new cities sprang up near mineral deposits. Others were based on powerful hydraulic and thermal power plants. Thus, the city of Stuchka was born at the Plyavinskaya hydroelectric station, the largest on the Daugava;
A special kind of resources contributed to the emergence of new resort towns: Jurmala on the coast of the Gulf of Riga, Neringa on the Curonian Spit, Birshtonas on the banks of the Neman. New resort towns appeared in Transcarpathia - Yaremcha, in Armenia - Jermuk, in the North Caucasus - Krasnaya Polyana.
Along with resource cities, there is a significant group of new-build cities based on the manufacturing industry. Some of them gravitate towards large economic centers, becoming their satellites. Zelenograd should be especially noted among such cities. It began to be built in 1960, 40 km from Moscow, and 10 years later it already had 73 thousand inhabitants. At present, the satellite city of the capital of the Soviet Union - Moscow - Zelenograd is developing as a center of progressive branches of science. Its production part is separated from the residential part by a green space. Widely used in Zelenograd new building materials - aluminum alloys and plastic. The city is not separated from nature. Tiny in the past, the Skhodnya was turned into a large reservoir with the help of a dam. Satellite cities also include Olaine (near Riga), Zavolzhye (near Gorky), Zhodino (near Minsk), and others.
Chemistry also served as the basis for the emergence of cities. For example, Kirishi near Leningrad and Novopolotsk in Belarus grew up near the new giant oil refineries. Coke chemistry laid the foundation for the city of Vidnoye near Moscow. In different regions of the country, new cities appeared, large centers for the production of cement - the "bread of construction": Akhangaran in Uzbekistan, Bezmein in Turkmenistan, Nauyi-Akmyane in Lithuania, Gornozavodsk in the Urals.
Great in the birth of cities and the role of transport. With its development, more and more nodal points appear that have a city-forming potential. These are Oktyabrsk, located at the intersection of the roads Guryev - Orsk and Orenburg - Tashkent, Esil, where the path to the bauxite mines of Arkalyk branches off from Yuzhsib. Ob, Lenek, Anadyr, Pevek, Sovetabad, Grebenka, Rybnoye, Chu, Divination, Druzhba are also transport cities.
Due to their youth, new cities most often have one profession. However, such highly specialized centers have some disadvantages. Therefore, they gradually strive for "part-time work", acquiring additional professions. Vivid examples of this are the city of Tchaikovsky, born of the Botkin hydroelectric power station, where a silk fabric factory was built and a synthetic rubber plant is being built, as well as Charentsavan, which arose near the Gyumush hydroelectric power station and became at the same time a center for the production of machine tools, tools and the building materials industry. The most numerous among the new cities are the cities-district centers that directly interact with their rural districts. This is a kind of "jack of all trades", about.serving surrounding area. Reflecting the economic appearance of their area, they often form regional types. Pallasovka and Krasny Kut in the Saratov Trans-Volga region, Izobilny in the North Caucasus mainly provide bread. In the Moldavian cities of Edinet and Kotovsk surrounded by gardens and vineyards. developed winemaking and canning vegetables and fruits. And located in fertile Kakheti, Kvareli is a wine-growing city. It houses a huge wine storage: 13 tunnels, each half a kilometer long, where about 2 million decaliters of wine are aged.
New cities push the boundaries of the developed territory. In the Far North, in the deserts of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the mountains of Southern Siberia, they continue the work begun by Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Norilsk, Magadan.
One of the remarkable features of the territorial distribution of new cities that have emerged in recent years is their more intensive formation in the southern regions of the country, which, as a rule, have the best natural conditions for resettlement.
Milestones on the path of our Motherland's advance towards communism are rising new cities - centers of science and large-scale industry, health resorts and transport hubs, satellites of large cities. The Soviet Union entered the 9th Five-Year Plan. Behind the lines of the Directives of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party are new cities that will come into being in the coming years.
Was 2.3 times larger than the US and quite a bit smaller than the continent North America. The area of the USSR is a large part of northern Asia and eastern Europe. Approximately a quarter of the territory was European part world, the remaining three-quarters lay in Asia. The main area of the USSR was occupied by Russia: three-quarters of the entire country.
The largest lakes
In the USSR, and now in Russia, there is the deepest and cleanest lake in the world - Baikal. It is the largest reservoir of fresh water created by nature, with unique fauna and flora. No wonder people have long called this lake the sea. It is located in the center of Asia, where the border of the Republic of Buryatia and the Irkutsk region passes, and stretches for six hundred and twenty kilometers in a giant crescent. The bottom of Baikal is 1167 meters below the ocean level, and its mirror is 456 meters higher. Depth - 1642 meters.
Another lake in Russia - Ladoga - is the largest in Europe. It belongs to the Baltic (sea) and Atlantic (ocean) basins, the northern and eastern shores are in the Republic of Karelia, and the western, southern and southeastern shores are in the Leningrad Region. The area of Lake Ladoga in Europe, like the area of the USSR in the world, has no equal - 18,300 square kilometers.
The largest rivers
The longest river in Europe is the Volga. It is so long that the peoples who inhabited its shores gave it different names. It flows in the European part of the country. This is one of the largest water arteries on earth. In Russia, a huge part of the territory adjacent to it is called the Volga region. Its length was 3690 kilometers, and the catchment area was 1,360,000 square kilometers. There are four cities on the Volga with a population of more than a million people - Volgograd, Samara (in the USSR - Kuibyshev), Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod (in the USSR - Gorky).
In the period from the 30s to the 80s of the twentieth century, eight huge hydroelectric power stations were built on the Volga - part of the Volga-Kama cascade. The river flowing in Western Siberia - the Ob is even more full-flowing, although a little shorter. Starting in Altai, it runs across the country to the Kara Sea for 3,650 kilometers, and its drainage basin is 2,990,000 square kilometers. In the southern part of the river is the man-made Ob Sea, formed during the construction of the Novosibirsk hydroelectric power station, the place is amazingly beautiful.
Territory of the USSR
The western part of the USSR occupied more than half of all of Europe. But if we take into account the entire area of the USSR before the collapse of the country, then the territory of the western part was barely a quarter of the entire country. However, the population was much higher: only twenty-eight percent of the country's inhabitants settled in the entire vast eastern territory.
In the west, between the Ural and Dnieper rivers, Russian empire originated and it was here that all the prerequisites for the emergence and prosperity of the Soviet Union appeared. The area of the USSR before the collapse of the country changed several times: some territories joined, for example, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the Baltic states. Gradually, the largest agricultural and industrial enterprises were organized in the eastern part, due to the presence there of various and richest minerals.
Borderland in length
The borders of the USSR, since our country, even now, after the separation of fourteen republics from it, is the largest in the world, are extremely long - 62,710 kilometers. From the west, the Soviet Union stretched east for ten thousand kilometers - ten time zones from the Kaliningrad region (Curonian Spit) to Ratmanov Island in the Bering Strait.
From south to north, the USSR ran for five thousand kilometers - from Kushka to Cape Chelyuskin. It had to border on land with twelve countries - six of them in Asia (Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia, China and North Korea), six in Europe (Finland, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania). maritime borders the territory of the USSR had only with Japan and the USA.
borderline wide
From north to south, the USSR stretched for 5000 km from Cape Chelyuskin in the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug of the Krasnoyarsk Territory to the Central Asian city of Kushka in the Mary Region of the Turkmen SSR. By land, the USSR bordered on 12 countries: 6 in Asia (DPRK, China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey) and 6 in Europe (Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway and Finland).
By sea, the USSR bordered on two countries - the USA and Japan. The country was washed by twelve seas of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The thirteenth sea is the Caspian, although in all respects it is a lake. That is why two-thirds of the borders were located along the seas, because the area of the former USSR had the longest coastline in the world.
Republics of the USSR: unification
In 1922, at the time of the formation of the USSR, it included four republics - the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR. Further divisions and replenishment took place. In Central Asia, the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs were formed (1924), and there were six republics within the USSR. In 1929, the autonomous republic located in the RSFSR was transformed into the Tajik SSR, of which there were already seven. In 1936, Transcaucasia was divided: three union republics were separated from the federation: Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian SSR.
At the same time, two more Central Asian autonomous republics that were part of the RSFSR were separated as the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR. There are eleven republics in total. In 1940, several more republics were admitted to the USSR, and there were sixteen of them: the Moldavian SSR, the Lithuanian SSR, the Latvian SSR and the Estonian SSR joined the country. In 1944, Tuva joined, but the SSR Tuva Autonomous Region did not. The Karelian-Finnish SSR (ASSR) changed its status several times, so there were fifteen republics in the 60s. In addition, there are documents according to which in the 60s Bulgaria asked to join the ranks of the union republics, but the request of Comrade Todor Zhivkov was not satisfied.
Republics of the USSR: collapse
From 1989 to 1991, the so-called parade of sovereignties took place in the USSR. Six of the fifteen republics refused to join the new federation - the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics and declared independence (Lithuanian SSR, Latvian, Estonian, Armenian and Georgian), and the Moldavian SSR declared a transition to independence. With all this, a number of autonomous republics decided to remain part of the union. These are Tatar, Bashkir, Chechen-Ingush (all - Russia), South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgia), Transnistria and Gagauzia (Moldova), Crimea (Ukraine).
collapse
But the collapse of the USSR took on a landslide character, and in 1991 almost all union republics proclaimed independence. The confederation also failed to be created, although Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Belarus decided to conclude such an agreement.
Then Ukraine held a referendum on independence and the three founding republics signed the Bialowieza agreements to dissolve the confederation, creating the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) at the level of an interstate organization. The RSFSR, Kazakhstan and Belarus did not declare independence and did not hold referendums. Kazakhstan, however, did it later.
Georgian SSR
It was formed in February 1921 under the name of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since 1922, it was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR as part of the USSR, and only in December 1936 directly became one of the republics of the Soviet Union. The Georgian SSR included the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, the Abkhaz ASSR, and the Adzhar ASSR. In the 1970s, the dissident movement under the leadership of Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Mirab Kostava intensified in Georgia. Perestroika brought new leaders to the Communist Party of Georgia, they lost the elections.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence, but this did not suit Georgia, the invasion began. Russia took part in this conflict on the side of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2000, the visa-free regime between Russia and Georgia was abolished. In 2008 (August 8) there was a "five-day war", as a result of which the President of Russia signed decrees recognizing the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as sovereign and independent states.
Armenia
The Armenian SSR was formed in November 1920, at first it was also part of the Transcaucasian Federation, and in 1936 it was separated and directly became part of the USSR. Armenia is located in the south of Transcaucasia, bordering on Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. The area of Armenia is 29,800 square kilometers, the population is 2,493,000 people (1970 census). The capital of the republic is Yerevan, the largest city among twenty-three (compared with 1913, when there were only three cities in Armenia, one can imagine the volume of construction and the scale of development of the republic in its Soviet period).
In thirty-four districts, in addition to cities, twenty-eight new urban-type settlements were built. The terrain is mostly mountainous, harsh, so almost half of the population lived in the Ararat valley, which is only six percent of the total territory. The population density is very high everywhere - 83.7 people per square kilometer, and in the Ararat valley - up to four hundred people. In the USSR, there was a lot of crowding only in Moldova. Also, favorable climatic and geographical conditions attracted people to the shores of Lake Sevan and to the Shirak valley. Sixteen percent of the territory of the republic is not covered by the permanent population at all, because at altitudes of more than 2500 above sea level it is impossible to live for a long time. After the collapse of the country, the Armenian SSR, already being a free Armenia, experienced several very difficult ("dark") years of blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, the confrontation with which has a long history.
Belarus
The Byelorussian SSR was located in the west of the European part of the USSR, bordering on Poland. The area of the republic is 207,600 square kilometers, the population is 9,371,000 people as of January 1976. The national composition according to the 1970 census: 7,290,000 Belarusians, the rest was divided by Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and a very small number of people of other nationalities.
The density is 45.1 people per square kilometer. Most big cities: capital - Minsk (1,189,000 inhabitants), Gomel, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Grodno, Bobruisk, Baranovichi, Brest, Borisov, Orsha. In Soviet times, new cities appeared: Soligorsk, Zhodino, Novopolotsk, Svetlogorsk and many others. In total, there are ninety-six cities and one hundred and nine urban-type settlements in the republic.
The nature is mostly of a flat type, moraine hills (Belarusian Ridge) stretch in the north-west, south under the swamps of the Belarusian Polesie. There are many rivers, the main ones are the Dnieper with Pripyat and Sozh, the Neman, the Western Dvina. In addition, there are more than eleven thousand lakes in the republic. The forest occupies a third of the territory, it is mostly coniferous.
History of the Byelorussian SSR
It was established in Belarus almost immediately after the October Revolution, after which the occupation followed: first German (1918), then Polish (1919-1920). In 1922, the BSSR was already part of the USSR, and in 1939 it was reunited with Western Belarus, which was torn away by Poland in connection with the treaty. The socialist society of the republic in 1941 fully rose to fight the Nazi-German invaders: partisan detachments operated throughout the territory (there were 1255 of them, almost four hundred thousand people participated in them). Belarus has been a member of the UN since 1945.
Communist construction after the war was highly successful. The BSSR was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Orders of Friendship of Peoples and the Order of the October Revolution. From an agrarian poor country, Belarus has turned into a prosperous and industrial one, which has established close ties with the rest of the union republics. In 1975, the level of industrial production exceeded the level of 1940 twenty-one times, and the level of 1913 - one hundred and sixty-six. Heavy industry and mechanical engineering developed. Power stations were built: Berezovskaya, Lukomlskaya, Vasilevichskaya, Smolevichskaya. Peat (the oldest in the industry) grew oil production and processing.
Industry and standard of living of the population of the BSSR
Mechanical engineering by the seventies of the twentieth century was represented by machine tool building, tractor building (the well-known tractor "Belarus"), automotive engineering (the giant "Belaz", for example), radio electronics. The chemical, food, and light industries developed and grew stronger. The standard of living in the republic rose steadily; in the ten years since 1966, the national income has grown two and a half times, and real per capita income has almost doubled. The retail turnover of cooperative and state trade (with public catering) has increased tenfold.
In 1975, the amount of deposits in reached almost three and a half billion rubles (in 1940 it was seventeen million). The republic became educated, moreover, education has not changed to this day, since it has not departed from the Soviet standard. The world highly appreciated such fidelity to the principles: colleges and universities of the republic attract a huge number of foreign students. Two languages are used equally here: Belarusian and Russian.