During World War I, the Russian Empire broke out in the February Revolution, which led to the fall of the Tsar and the disintegration of the Russian Empire[note?1]. A Provisional Government organized by the civic class and soviets (Russian for "assemblies") representing the workers and soldiers coexisted. In the end, the left wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) led by Vladimir Lenin, together with other left-wing parties, staged an uprising in St. Petersburg and seized power from the Provisional Government, which became known as the October Revolution. After the revolution, the country was renamed Soviet Socialist Russia, or Soviet Russia for short, and then signed a peace treaty with Germany and its allies and withdrew from the First World War.
After the end of World War I, Britain, France, Japan, Poland, and the United States, dissatisfied with Soviet Russia's unilateral withdrawal from the war with Germany and the debts of Tsarist Russia, intervened militarily in the Russian Revolution. The forces loyal to the Tsar at home as well as the rich peasants, landlords and bourgeois forces organized the White Army to launch a war against the Soviet regime. After the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Red Army defeated the combined armed intervention of the White Army and many countries and consolidated power.
On December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist*** and States (the USSR), consisting of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the South Caucasus Federation*** together, was formally established.
In 1924, Lenin died and Stalin gained supreme power. The Soviet Union entered the Stalinist period.
Many believe that Stalin, in order to consolidate his personal position, cracked down on his political opponents through brutal means, launching purges in the form of purges. Millions of people were allegedly sent to labor camps and even massacred. Although, Stalin was regarded by most people in the West and some Soviets as a dictator who was cruel and committed serious crimes, it is undeniable that under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet ****production party carried out a major revamping of the Soviet Union's economic mode of production and succeeded in remodeling the USSR into a heavy industrial and militarily powerful country.
Beginning in the 1930s, the West adopted a "policy of appeasement" to placate Hitler and condoned Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, agreeing to Nazi Germany's freedom of action in Eastern and South-Central Europe, which made the Soviet Union feel that the West was attempting to "divert" fascism "to the east".
The Soviet Union felt that the West was attempting to bring fascism "eastward.
While the Soviet Union repeatedly proposed an alliance with Britain and France, Britain and France issued the Anglo-German Declaration and the Franco-German Declaration on non-aggression with Germany; in contrast, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop repeatedly expressed his hope for better relations with the Soviet Union. In 1939, the Soviet Union adopted the strategy of "pushing water westward" and secretly signed the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact in alliance with Germany.
After the outbreak of World War II, according to the sphere of influence divided by the treaty, the Soviet Union, in the name of "establishing an eastern front to prevent German invasion", sent troops to divide Poland with Germany, attacked Finland and occupied parts of Eastern Europe. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were forcibly incorporated into the USSR, which accelerated the convergence of its neighboring countries into the fascist axis and made the USSR quite unpopular at the beginning of World War II.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union, the Soviet Red Army in the early stages of the war, the Soviet Union suffered major military losses, in the first week of the Soviet Army lost nine hundred aircraft, thousands of artillery, more than 1,000 tanks and dozens of regular divisions. After that, the Soviet-German battlefield became the main battlefield of the European continent, and in early 1943, the Soviet army took the initiative on the battlefield after winning the Battle of Stalingrad after a bloody battle. By May 1945, the Allied forces, including the Soviet Red Army, had captured all of Nazi Germany, and the war in Europe was over.On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Red Army declared war on Japan and marched into northeastern China and northern Korea to wipe out the Japanese Kwantung Army.
In the fall of 1941, when the German army reached the northwestern outskirts of Moscow, the Soviet government and its envoys moved south to what is now the city of Samara, and on Nov. 7, Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, arrived in the beleaguered city of Moscow and held a grand parade, after which all the troops on parade were immediately marched off to the battlefield. It was an inspiring event. The Soviet government made a documentary of this tragic ceremony, which was broadcast around the country and had a great effect on uniting the country during World War II, laying a solid foundation for the Soviet Union's final victory.
In October 1944, the Soviet Union annexed the Tangnu-Ulianghai region in northwestern China's Outer Mongolia.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and representatives of the Republic of China signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, resulting in the independence of Outer Mongolia .
After the war, the Soviet Union felt threatened by the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so tit-for-tat the Warsaw Pact was created. The Cold War period begins.
In 1953, Stalin died. Several years of political struggle took place between the top leaders of the Soviet ****production party, and finally Khrushchev became the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. After that, the Soviet Union entered the Khrushchev period.
Khrushchev ended police terror, freed millions of political prisoners, and rehabilitated nearly 20 million people. But Khrushchev's sweeping criticism of Stalin also triggered political upheaval in the socialist allies of Eastern Europe for a time.
Since then, political conflicts have erupted between the Soviet Union and many countries. But in the field of aerospace, the Soviet Union made remarkable achievements.
In 1964, Khrushchev stepped down, Brezhnev became the supreme leader, and the Soviet Union entered the Brezhnev era.
During the Brezhnev era, the USSR pursued an expansionist policy, triggering many armed conflicts and further expanding the socialist camp. On the one hand, the Soviet Union's military power had reached a point where it had caught up with that of the United States; but on the other hand, the gap between the Soviet Union's overall economic level and that of the Western developed countries was still very large. Brezhnev tried to improve the living standard of the Soviet people by introducing a Soviet-style welfare system, but without a strong economic foundation to back it up, this welfare system sowed the seeds for the collapse of the USSR later on.
Brezhnev died in 1982, and his successors, Andropov and Chernenko, both died after less than two years in office, while Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and the Soviet Union entered the Gorbachev era.
Gorbachev was a reformist. Gorbachev turned to political reforms in the face of setbacks and slow progress in economic reforms, practicing economic reconstruction and an open-door policy at home, and reckoning with historical mistakes. But his reforms brought unintended consequences. With the decentralization of the central government, the leaders of the member states began to seek greater autonomy. As "openness" became more and more entrenched, the Soviet Union lost the hearts and minds of the people while its historical problems and crimes were exposed.
With the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe, the governments of the Soviet Union **** and countries also followed the example of the Eastern European countries, intending to separate from the Soviet Union and become independent.
August 24, 1991, the Soviet Union's second-largest **** and countries declared independence, Ukraine. The Soviet Union began to move towards disintegration.
After that, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the declaration of the Soviet **** as an illegal organization and restricted its activities in Russia. In late 1991, he signed a contract with the presidents of Belarus and Ukraine in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to form the Commonwealth of Independent States, replacing the USSR from a structure similar to that of the Greater Britain Association. The other member states of the USSR responded by leaving the USSR, which by this time existed in name only.
On December 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation, handing over power to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and on the evening of December 25, the Soviet Union's flag was lowered from the sky over the Kremlin, and on December 26, the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself, marking the end of the Soviet Union's existence as a sovereign state.
On August 24, 1991, the Russian Soviet Union*** and State declared independence and became the Russian Federation. Since then, the Russian Federation has maintained its status as a great power, but has always faced economic difficulties.