The Rise and Fall of the USSR

Origins

The Soviet Union was born out of the chaos of World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire. In 1917, the February Revolution forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate, ending centuries of Romanov rule. A provisional government took power, but it was weak, divided, and unable to meet the needs of the people.

Later that year, the Bolsheviks, a radical socialist faction led by Vladimir Lenin, staged the October Revolution and seized control. Promising “peace, land, and bread,” they quickly withdrew Russia from the war and nationalised industry and farmland.

This sparked a bitter civil war (1918–1921) between the Bolshevik Red Army and various anti-communist forces, collectively known as the Whites. After years of brutal fighting and foreign intervention, the Bolsheviks emerged victorious.

In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was officially established, uniting Russia with neighbouring republics under a centralised, one-party communist regime.

Stalinism

After Lenin's death in 1924, a fierce power struggle ensued. Joseph Stalin, a Georgian revolutionary, eventually outmanoeuvred rivals like Leon Trotsky to become the USSR’s undisputed leader, though his rise surprised many…

He was not a great orator like Trotsky. He wasn’t known as an intellectual. He’s Lenin’s organisation man. In other words, he’s the man who knows the people on the ground. And that proved to be very advantageous.

Sheila Fitzgerald, author of The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

Stalin introduced collectivised agriculture, aiming to modernise the Soviet economy. Despite the grand ambitions, there was no realistic, co-ordinated plan in place – just orders from on high that it should happen. Accordingly, the results were disastrous.

Between 1929 and 1932, around 20 million small peasant landholdings were forcibly consolidated into just under a quarter of a million collective farms. Promised machinery often failed to arrive, or peasants were ill-equipped to use it. Traditional knowledge was lost, and regional conditions were ignored.

By 1933, famine had spread across a vast area from Ukraine to Western Siberia. Though the death toll was somewhere between 5 and 10 million, Stalin forbade any official mention of the catastrophe.

Stalin also drove rapid industrialisation through Five-Year Plans, but with limited funding and no foreign investment, progress relied on a massive influx of cheap labour. During the 1930s, over 10 million people joined the urban workforce, fleeing rural poverty for the cities—often trading one hardship for another.

Life was really difficult because it had become so hard to get food, a living space, clothes, and everything that you need for everyday life.

Sheila Fitzgerald, author of The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

Eager to silence the dissenting voices, Stalin began the Great Purge of the 1930s, in which he targeted perceived enemies within the Communist Party, the military, and the general population. An estimated 1 million people were executed, and millions more were sent to Gulag labour camps.

To eliminate dissent, Stalin initiated the Great Purge in the 1930s, targeting perceived enemies within the Communist Party, the military, and the general population. Around 1 million people were executed, and millions more sent to Gulag labour camps.

Even foreign exile offered no safety. On August 20th, 1940, Trotsky—by then living in Mexico City—was assassinated by a Soviet agent wielding a pickaxe.

War

In 1939, the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, a non-aggression agreement that shocked the world. But on June 22nd 1941, Hitler betrayed the pact by launching Operation Barbarossa—the largest land invasion in history.

The Soviet Air Force was decimated, and millions of soldiers and civilians were forced to flee. By the end of 1942, nearly half of Soviet territory was under German occupation. Millions were held as prisoners of war or forced labourers in Germany.

A decisive victory at Leningrad turned the tide for the Soviets - one of the war’s bloodiest battles. Now, it was the Germans who were on the retreat.

On April 30th 1945, Soviet troops reached Berlin, the German capital, planting their nation’s Hammer and Sickle flag on top of the German centre of government, the Reichstag.

That summer, the USSR celebrated its first Victory Day in Red Square. The war had transformed the Soviet Union into a global superpower, and it soon extended its influence across Eastern Europe, establishing communist regimes in countries like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary—setting the stage for the Cold War.

The Cold War

The Cold War was an ideological and geopolitical struggle between the capitalist West and the communist East.

As the Allies carved up Berlin, tensions mounted between Stalin and Western leaders. The USSR and USA entered into a prolonged standoff marked by proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), a nuclear arms race, and the space race. At its height, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis—but disaster was narrowly avoided.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union entered a period of de-Stalinisation under Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin's cult of personality and many of his brutal policies. This led to a brief "Thaw" in political repression and some economic reforms. 

However, the one-party system remained firmly in place, and dissent continued to be suppressed, albeit less violently than under Stalin. Subsequent leaders, such as Leonid Brezhnev, largely maintained this status quo, leading to an era of stagnation.

Decline and Collapse

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with bold new policies: Glasnost, which translates as openness and transparency, and Perestroika, which means restructuring, aimed at reforming the failing economy.

The trouble with perestroika is that it doesn't say what kind of reconstruction. Gorbachev never said what kind. He had a sense that the economy needed some structural improvement. But what kind?

Sheila Fitzgerald, author of The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

At first, Glasnost brought genuine change. Restrictions on the press were loosened, public criticism of the government surged, and once-banned works like Orwell’s 1984 - a hymn against totalitarianism - became widely available.

But in 1986, disaster struck. Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl exploded, sending radioactive fallout across Europe. The Kremlin’s initial silence exposed the limits of its “openness” and tarnished Gorbachev’s image abroad.

As a result, nationalist movements grew in the Baltic states and elsewhere. In 1989, communist regimes across Eastern Europe fell, and the Berlin Wall came down, ending decades of division and, with it, the fall of the Iron Curtain.

By 1991, the Soviet Union was unravelling. In August, hardline communists attempted a coup but failed. On December 25th, 1991, Gorbachev resigned. The Soviet Union was officially dissolved, replaced by the Russian Federation, headed by Boris Yeltsin, alongside 14 newly independent republics.

Legacy

More than a hundred years after its initial creation, the Soviet Union remains a story of what happens when unbending ideology collides with the human appetite for power, and the unpredictability of real life. And though its collapse resulted in independence for an array of new and reborn nations, the echoes of its regime are still felt today as they carve out their places in the new world order.