:Republics of the Soviet Union

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{{see also|National delimitation in the Soviet Union|Korenizatsiya|Religion in the Soviet Union}}

Chapter 8 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution is titled as the "Soviet Union is a union state". Article 70 stated that the union was founded on principles "socialist federalism" as a result of free self-determination of nation and volunteer association of equal in rights soviet socialist republics. Article 71 listed all of 15 union republics that united into the Soviet Union.

According to Article 76 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, a Union Republic was a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with other Soviet Republics in the USSR. Article 78 of the Constitution stated that the territory of the union republic cannot be changed without its agreement. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K6Gt3FE5YHMC |title=Federalism and the Dictatorship of Power in Russia By Mikhail Stoliarov|page=56|isbn=978-0-415-30153-4 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |date=2014 |access-date=18 February 2014}}

In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). All of them, with the exception of the Russian SFSR (until 1990), had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.

In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for separate branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense, allowing them to be recognized as de jure independent states in international law. This allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, (as well as the USSR as a whole) to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945.{{cite web |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=NAQtAAAAIBAJ&pg=3477,829499&hl=en |title=Walter Duranty Explains Changes In Soviet Constitution |work=Miami News |date=6 February 1944 |access-date=18 February 2014 }}{{Dead link|date=April 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{cite web |url=http://www.indiana.edu/~league/1944.htm |title=League of Nations Timeline – Chronology 1944 |publisher=Indiana.edu |access-date=18 February 2014 |archive-date=15 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130615123043/http://www.indiana.edu/~league/1944.htm |url-status=dead }}{{cite web|url=https://www.un.org/depts/dhl/unms/founders.shtml |title=United Nations – Founding Members |publisher=Un.org |access-date=18 February 2014}}

The Soviet currency Soviet ruble banknotes all included writings in national languages of all the 15 union republics.

All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, with ten of them (all except the Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine) being very loosely organized under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Baltic states assert that their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 (as the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian SSRs) under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was illegal, and that they therefore remained independent countries under Soviet occupation.{{cite web|url=http://www.am.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/occupation-aspects|title=The Occupation of Latvia at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia|publisher=Am.gov|access-date=31 October 2007|archive-date=24 November 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111124083521/http://www.am.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/occupation-aspects/|url-status=dead}} Their position is supported by the European Union,[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+MOTION+B6-2007-0215+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN Motion for a resolution on the Situation in Estonia] by the EU the European Court of Human Rights,European Court of Human Rights cases on Occupation of Baltic States the United Nations Human Rights Council{{cite web|url=http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?c=62&su=70 |title=UNITED NATIONS Human Rights Council Report |publisher=Ap.ohchr.org |access-date=18 February 2014}} and the United States.{{cite web |title=U.S.-Baltic Relations: Celebrating 85 Years of Friendship |url=http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/EUR/State/86539.pdf |date=14 June 2007 |publisher=U.S. Department of State |access-date=29 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120819185542/http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/EUR/State/86539.pdf |archive-date=19 August 2012 |url-status=dead }} In contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4517683.stm Russia denies Baltic 'occupation'] by BBC News

{{Anchor|Constitutional status}}

Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation. In accordance with provisions present in its Constitution (versions adopted in 1924, 1936 and 1977), each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Throughout the Cold War, this right was widely considered to be meaningless; however, the corresponding Article 72 of the 1977 Constitution was used in December 1991 to effectively dissolve the Soviet Union, when Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus seceded from the Union. Although the Union was created under an initial ideological appearance of forming a supranational union, it never de facto functioned as one; an example of the ambiguity is that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s officially had its own foreign minister, but that office did not exercise any true sovereignty apart from that of the union. The Constitution of the Soviet Union in its various iterations defined the union as a federation with the right of the republics to secede. This constitutional status led to the possibility of the parade of sovereignties once the republic with de facto (albeit not de jure) dominance over the other republics, the Russian one, developed a prevailing political notion asserting that it would be better off if it seceded. The de facto dominance of the Russian republic is the reason that various historians (for example, Dmitri Volkogonov and others) have asserted that the union was a unitary state in fact albeit not in law.{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitri Antonovich |authorlink=Dmitri Volkogonov |title=Autopsy for an Empire: the Seven Leaders who Built the Soviet Regime |date=1998 |publisher=Free Press/Simon and Schuster |location=New York |isbn=9780684834207}}{{rp|71,483}}{{cite journal |last1=Butler |first1=William E. |last2=Kahn |first2=Jeffrey |title=Federalism or Federationism. A book review of: Federalism, Democratization and the Rule of Law in Russia by Jeffrey Kahn |journal=Michigan Law Review |date=May 2002 |volume=100 |issue=6 |pages=1444–1452 |doi=10.2307/1290449|jstor=1290449 }}

In practice, the USSR was a highly centralised entity from its creation in 1922 until the mid-1980s when political forces unleashed by reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev resulted in the loosening of central control and its ultimate dissolution. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, the political foundation of the Soviet Union was formed by the Soviets (Councils) of People's Deputies. These existed at all levels of the administrative hierarchy with the Soviet Union as a whole under the nominal control of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, located in Moscow within the Russian SFSR.

Along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the parallel party organs, and appointments of all party and state officials required approval of the central organs of the party.

Each republic had its own unique set of state symbols: a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990, an anthem. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin.

File:E7901-Bishkek-museum-Lenin-carpet.jpg|A hall in Bishkek's Soviet-era Lenin Museum decorated with the flags of Soviet Republics

File:USSRRepublicsPoster.jpg|Poster of the unity of the Soviet republics in the late 1930s. All republics, except Russia, are shown with their respective traditional clothes.

File:Ltsr plakatas 1946 tsrs.jpg|Poster of the unity of the Soviet republics in 1946. Note that the map also points out the Karelo-Finnish SSR capital, Petrozavodsk.

{{see also|Emblem of the Soviet Union}}

File:USSR Republics numbered by Constitution.svg, 2. Ukraine, 3. Belarus, 4. Uzbekistan, 5. Kazakhstan, 6. Georgia, 7. Azerbaijan, 8. Lithuania, 9. Moldavia, 10. Latvia, 11. Kyrgyzstan, 12. Tajikistan, 13. Armenia, 14. Turkmenistan, 15. Estonia]]

The number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. From 1956 until its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. (In 1956, the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, created in 1940, was absorbed into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.) Rather than listing the republics in alphabetical order, the republics were listed in constitutional order (which roughly corresponded to their population and economic power when the republics were formed). However, particularly by the last decades of the Soviet Union, the constitutional order did not correspond to order either by population or economic power.

Some of the union republics were autonomous republics before promotion. Soviet historiography considered the establishment of an autonomous republic to be the start of national autonomy and the succeeding union republic a continuation of the same entity in such cases.{{cite book |title=The Sixteen Soviet Republics |year=1945 |publisher=Embassy of the USSR, Washington, D.C. |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/overview/sixteensovietrepublics.pdf |page=2 }}

The Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. The Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic (Soviet Socialist Republic of Taurida) was also proclaimed in 1918, but did not become a union republic and was made into an autonomous republic of the RSFSR, although the Crimean Tatars had a relative majority until the 1930s or 1940s according to censuses. When the Tuvan People's Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, and was instead established as an autonomous republic of the RSFSR.

The leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected.{{cite book |last=Elster |first=Jon |title=The roundtable talks and the breakdown of communism |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1996 |page=179 |isbn=0-226-20628-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQZIjbQri0gC&pg=PA179 }}{{cite book |last=Held |first=Joseph |title=Dictionary of East European history since 1945 |publisher=Greenwood Press |year=1994 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofeast0000held/page/84 84] |isbn=0-313-26519-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofeast0000held/page/84 }}{{cite book |last=Gökay |first=Bülent |title=Eastern Europe since 1970 |publisher=Longman |year=2001 |page=19 |isbn=0-582-32858-6}} During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic.[http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1984/08/19/page/8/ Soviets may be poised to annex the Afghan North] - Chicago Tribune. 19 August 1984. Retrieved on 10 December 2016. "Miraki said then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev urged Afghan President Babrak Karmal to win Afghan Communist Party approval for Moscow's annexation of eight northern provinces and their formation into the 16th Soviet republic, the Socialist Republic of Afghanistan. The defector said Brezhnev envisioned the southern half of the country as a powerless, Pa-than-speaking buffer with U.S.-backed Pakistan."

{{main|Parade of sovereignties}}

• Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets (1917–1918) → Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1918)
• Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919)
• Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia (1919–1920)
• Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (1920)
• Polish Soviet Socialist Republic (1920)
• East Polish Soviet Socialist Republic (1990)

{{see also|Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics}}

Several of the Union Republics themselves, most notably Russia, were further subdivided into Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs). Though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines.

According to the constitution of the USSR, in case of a union republic voting on leaving the Soviet Union, autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs had the right, by means of a referendum, to independently resolve whether they will stay in the USSR or leave with the seceding union republic, as well as to raise the issue of their state-legal status.{{cite web|url=https://docs.cntd.ru/document/902002993|title=СОЮЗ СОВЕТСКИХ СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКИХ РЕСПУБЛИК. ЗАКОН О порядке решения вопросов, связанных с выходом союзной республики из СССР|language=ru|access-date=13 June 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160912024819/https://docs.cntd.ru/document/902002993|archive-date=12 September 2016}}

{{Further|Dissolution of the Soviet Union}}

Starting in the late 1980s, under the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet government undertook a program of political reforms (glasnost and perestroika) intended to liberalise and revitalise the Union. These measures, however, had a number of unintended political and social effects. Political liberalisation allowed the governments of the union republics to openly invoke the principles of democracy and nationalism to gain legitimacy. In addition, the loosening of political restrictions led to fractures within the Communist Party which resulted in a reduced ability to govern the Union effectively. The rise of nationalist and right-wing movements, notably led by Boris Yeltsin in Russia, in the previously homogeneous political system undermined the Union's foundations. With the central role of the Communist Party removed from the constitution, the Party lost its control over the State machinery and was banned from operating after an attempted coup d'état.

Throughout this period of turmoil, the Soviet government attempted to find a new structure that would reflect the increased authority of the republics. Some autonomous republics, like Tatarstan, Checheno-Ingushetia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria, Gagauzia sought the union statute in the New Union Treaty. Efforts to found a New Union Treaty, however, proved unsuccessful and the republics began to secede from the Union. By 6 September 1991, the Soviet Union's State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania bringing the number of union republics down to 12. On 8 December 1991, the remaining leaders of the republics signed the Belavezha Accords which agreed that the USSR would be dissolved and replaced with a Commonwealth of Independent States. On 25 December, President Gorbachev announced his resignation and turned all executive powers over to Yeltsin. The next day the Council of Republics voted to dissolve the Union. Since then, the republics have been governed independently with some reconstituting themselves as liberal parliamentary republics and others, particularly in Central Asia, devolving into highly autocratic states under the leadership of the old Party elite.

• Flags of the Soviet Republics
• Emblems of the Soviet Republics
• Commonwealth of Independent States
• Eurasian Economic Union
• National delimitation in the Soviet Union
• Bavarian Soviet Republic
• Hungarian Soviet Republic
• Slovak Soviet Republic
• Limerick Soviet
• Paris Commune
• Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (Polish SSR)
• Republics of Russia
• Federal subjects of Russia
• Post-Soviet states (former Soviet Republics)

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• Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War
• Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union
• Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union

{{Republics of the Soviet Union}}

{{Soviet Union topics}}

{{Russia topics}}

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Category:Decentralization

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Category:Countries and territories where Russian is an official language