The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic together with Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Transcaucasia, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the USSR on December 30, 1922. Of the 15 republics that made up the Soviet Union, the largest in size and half the population of the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Republic, later dominated the union during its 69 year history.
After Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, a troika was appointed to run the country. However, Joseph Stalin, the elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began to eliminate all opposition groups within the party as well as his political opponents and gather power in his hands. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of the world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin’s idea of Socialism in One Country became the main line. Internal conflict within the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge, a period of mass repression in 1937-38, when hundreds to thousands of people were executed, including early party members and military leaders, for allegedly orchestrating a coup d’état.
Under Stalin’s leadership, the government launched a planned economy, industrialized the largely rural country, and collectivization of agriculture. During this period of rapid economic growth, millions of people were sent to forced labor camps,
including various political prisoners who opposed Stalin millions more were deported and exiled to remote places.
The transitional disorganization of state agriculture, coupled with tyrannical state policies, led to the Soviet Famine of 1932–1933. The Soviet Union, even though it came at a high price, changed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial country in a short time.
After Stalin’s death and a short period of collective leadership, the new leader Nikita Khrushchev dispelled Stalin’s cult of individuality and launched a policy of de-Stalinization. The system of forced labor was reformed and many prisoners were released and rehabilitated (many of them posthumously).
This policy later became known as the Khrushchev Thaw. At the same time, tensions with the United States escalated when these two eternal rivals clashed due to the United States’ Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba.
