History glossary
Soviet Union
a communist state led from Moscow that existed after the Russian Revolution until 1991.
- Category
- State
- Region
- Eurasia
- Date range
- 1922-1991
What it means
The Soviet Union was a federal communist state made up of Russia and other republics. It became one of the two main superpowers during the Cold War and shaped twentieth-century politics, war, economics, and ideology.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Holocaust
From legal discrimination to genocide, the Holocaust traces twelve years of escalating persecution that killed six million Jews and millions of others across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Operation Barbarossa
From Hitler's ideological war in the east to Soviet survival before Moscow, Barbarossa turned expected blitzkrieg into prolonged attritional catastrophe.
The Cold War
Rivalry between East and West shapes global politics - through proxy wars, propaganda, and nuclear tension.
Kievan Rus
The founding of the Rus’ state in the north.
The Kim Dynasty
North Korea’s Kim dynasty built a nuclear-armed regime, maintaining power through crises and control.
The Korean War
A Cold War conflict that divided Korea, ending in stalemate and a lasting unresolved border.
The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia fractured through crisis, nationalism, and war, collapsing violently in the 1990s.
The Russian Revolution
From the 1905 crisis to the creation of the USSR, the Russian Revolution transformed imperial collapse into a new one-party socialist state.
