Foreign relations
Main article: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was denied recognition by most countries when it was founded in 1922. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934, but was expelled in 1939 amid the start of the Winter War. However, World War II established the USSR as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through military strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry.
Soviet foreign policy played a major role determining the tenor of international relations for nearly four decades, and the Soviet Union had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet Union became a member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945. It also became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions. (see Soviet Union and the United Nations)
The CPSU Central Committee Politburo determined the major foreign policy guidelines. The overarching objectives of Soviet foreign policy were national security and the maintenance of hegemony over the Warsaw Pact.
As the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, Cold War superpower competition between the Soviet Union and the U.S. gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs in the 1960s and 1970s. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). Since the early 1970s, the Soviet Union concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the noncommunist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia claimed to be the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage. Russian foreign policy repudiated Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action, soliciting Western support for capitalist reforms in postcommunist Russia.
Republics
Main article: Republics of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was a federation of Socialist Soviet Republics (SSR). The first Republics were established shortly after October Revolution of 1917. At that time, republics were technically independent one from another but their governments acted in close coordination. In 1922, four Republics (Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SFSR) joined into the Soviet Union. Between 1922 and 1940, the number of Republics grew to sixteen. Some of new Republics were formed from territories conquered by Soviet Union, others by splitting existing Republics into several parts. The criteria for establishing new republics were as follows:
- to be located on the periphery of the Soviet so as to be able to exercise their alleged right to secession,
- be economically strong enough to survive on their own upon secession and
- be named after the dominant ethnic group which should consist of at least one million people.
The system remained almost unchanged after 1940. No new Republics were established. One republic, Karelo-Finnish SSR, was disbanded in 1956. The remaining 15 Republics existed until the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 and became independent countries, with some still loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States.
Some republics had common history and geographical regions, and were referred by group names.
These were Baltic Republics, Transcaucasian Republics, and Central Asian Republics.
