The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were
ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the
Government of the Soviet Union. For most of its history, the Soviet Union was a
highly centralized state; the decentralization reforms during the era
of Perestroika and Glasnost conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991. Overview
According to the Article 76 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, a
Union Republic was a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with
other Soviet Republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Article 81
of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics
shall be safeguarded by the USSR". In the final decades of its existence,
the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics. All
of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation, had their own local
party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.
Outside the territory of the Russian Federation, the republics were
constituted mostly in lands that had formerly belonged to the Russian Empire
and had been acquired by it between the 1700 Great Northern War and the
Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. 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, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in
1945. All of the former Republics of the Union
are now independent countries, with eleven of them being very loosely
organized under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
However, most of the international community did not consider the Baltic
countries to have legitimately been part of the USSR. The Baltic states assert
that their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 under the provisions of
the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was illegal, and that they therefore
remained independent countries under Soviet occupation. Their position is
supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the
United Nations Human Rights Council and the United States. In contrast, the
Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of
the Baltic states was legitimate. Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a
federation. In accordance with provisions present in the Constitution,
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. 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
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 Federation.
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.
The republics and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
In the later decades of its existence, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet
Socialist Republics. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, openness and restructuring
were intended to liberalise and open up the Soviet Union. However, they had a
number of effects which caused the power of the republics to increase. First,
political liberalization allowed the governments within the republics to gain
legitimacy by invoking democracy, nationalism, or a combination of both.
In addition, liberalization led to fractures within the Communist Party
which resulted in reduced ability to effectively govern the Union. The rise
of nationalist and right-wing movements, notably led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin,
in the previously homogeneously Communist political system led to the
crumbling of the Union's foundations. With the central role of the Communist
Party removed from the constitution, the Communist Party lost its control over
the political system and was banned from operating after an attempted coup
d'état. Throughout the unravelling of the
Restructuring, the Soviet government attempted to find a new structure which
would reflect the increasing power of the republics. These efforts proved
unsuccessful, and the republics began to secede from the Union. On 8 December
1991, the remaining republic leaders 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 adopting significantly more liberal
policies while others, particularly in Central Asia, retain leadership
personnel from the Soviet time to this day.
^a The annexation of the Baltic republics in 1940 is considered an
illegal occupation by the current Baltic governments and by a number of Western
countries, including the United States and the European Union. The Soviet Union
considered the initial annexation legal, but officially recognized their
independence on September 6, 1991, three months prior to its final dissolution.
= Other Soviet republics of the Soviet Union=
The Abkhazian SSR, soon after its establishment in 1921, belonged as a
contractual republic to the Georgian SSR and by extension to the Transcaucasian
SFSR in 1922. Its status was changed to an autonomous SSR of the Georgian SSR in
1931. It is now the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia, which is not recognized by
Georgia or most of the international community.
The Transcaucasian SFSR was formed from the Armenian, Azerbaijan and Georgian
SSRs. It was divided back to the three SSRs in 1936.
The Khorezm SSR was divided between the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs.
The Bukharan SSR was divided between the Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen SSRs.
The Karelo-Finnish SSR was restored to the Karelian autonomous SSR which
belonged to the Russian SFSR. Its successor state is the Republic of
Karelia within the Russian Federation. The leader of the People's Republic of
Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should
become a Soviet socialist republic of the USSR, but the offer was rejected.
Autonomous Republics of the Soviet Union Several of the Union Republics
themselves, most notably Russia, were further subdivided into Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republics. Though administratively part of their
respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on
ethnic/cultural lines. See also
National delimitation in the Soviet Union
Bavarian Soviet Republic Hungarian Soviet Republic
Paris Commune Provisional Polish Revolutionary
Committee References