Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

D

1

Defense

The USSR had the largest armed forces in the world and, indeed, the largest peacetime military establishment in history. They were controlled by the Ministry of Defense, which was commanded and administered almost exclusively by career military officers, virtually all of whom belonged to the CPSU. The uniformed military were well represented in government and CPSU policy bodies and had a good deal of say on national security policy; their advice was generally not welcomed on other issues.

Military service was compulsory in the Soviet Union for all males beginning at the age of 18. The terms were changed repeatedly, but from the late 1960s onward conscripts served for three years in the navy and for two years in other units. Total military manpower in 1989, not counting KGB and MVD troops, was estimated to be 4,178,000. The largest branch of the forces, with 1,596,000 troops, was the ground forces. The USSR also had an air defense of 502,000 troops; a navy of 462,000; an air force of 330,000; and strategic rocket forces of 287,000. About 1 million persons in service were in construction battalions, special railroad detachments, and support units. Approximately 500,000 Soviet troops were stationed in four East European countries—East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary—and smaller contingents were temporarily based in allied countries in the developing world.

As a result of years of investment in defense research, development, and production, the forces had gigantic stocks of hardware. In 1989 the USSR was believed to deploy more than 60,000 tanks, 6800 combat aircraft, 620 major surface ships and submarines, 8500 surface-to-air missiles, and 2400 intercontinental and submarine-launched strategic missiles loaded with nuclear warheads.

Starting more slowly than the United States, the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal overtook the Americans’ in size in the mid-1970s and peaked at about 45,000 weapons in 1986; about 10,100 of those warheads were strategic weapons designed to strike the enemy’s home base, and the rest were tactical weapons for use on the battlefield. Largely because of arms-control agreements with the West, the Soviet nuclear stockpile was reduced to about 40,000 weapons in 1989 and 35,000 in 1991. Most strategic forces were stored at bases and launch sites in interior locations in Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, and the RSFSR. Tactical weapons were widely dispersed, and thousands were held by Soviet forces in Eastern Europe.

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E

Social Services

The Soviet government enacted its first social-welfare decree within one week of taking power, putting the burden on private firms to insure their employees against disability and other risks. With the nationalization of most industry, the state became the main insurer. The categories eligible for public assistance were broadened slowly in the 1920s. In 1937 all employed persons—a category that excluded peasants on the collective farms—became eligible for old-age pensions. Income maintenance programs were overhauled in 1956 and reformed again in the 1970s, when the formerly excluded peasants were brought into the state pension scheme.

The Soviet social-security system was quite comprehensive in coverage. Legislation provided for old-age pensions to all women and men beginning at the retirement age, mothers’ allowances for families with three or more children, pensions for disability or loss of a family wage earner, and grants to students in higher education. All medical services were provided free of charge.

Government-provided social services, such as health care, registered some successes in the USSR; they also suffered from overuse, corruption, and unequal access. Pensions and other income maintenance programs were extremely popular, but the sums provided were often insufficient. Partly in recognition of limitations on its resources, the regime in the 1930s reconsidered its earlier coolness toward the nuclear family and passed laws affirming the importance of marriage and of family responsibility for children and elderly parents. Even after income support was made more generous in the 1950s and 1960s, many Soviet citizens relied on their relatives to give them shelter and financial aid in their old age or at times of illness.

VI

History of the Soviet Union

This section continues the history of the Russian Empire, presented in the article on Russia, and highlights some of the pivotal events in the history of the Soviet Union.

A

The Bolsheviks Gain Power

Chronologically, Soviet history may be said to have begun October 25 (or November 7, in the Western, or New Style, calendar), 1917. That was the day the Russian Revolution, the first phase of which overthrew Emperor Nicholas II the previous February (or March, New Style), culminated in the assumption of state power by the Congress of Soviets, made up of deputies from local soviets across Russia and led by the Bolsheviks. The militant wing of the Russian socialist movement, the Bolsheviks had been headed since their inception in 1903 by Vladimir Lenin, a career revolutionary who spent much of his adult life in exile in Siberia and Western Europe.

The congress formed a Council of People’s Commissars to act as its executive branch. The council was chaired by Lenin and had mostly Bolshevik members, but several other socialist parties were also seated. The Congress of Soviets, following Lenin’s lead, immediately resolved to withdraw Russia from World War I (1914-1918), in which it had suffered grievous losses to Germany and Austria-Hungary, and to seek “peace without annexations.” (The wavering Provisional Government, which ruled between the two phases of the 1917 revolution, had kept Russia in the war and even mounted a calamitous offensive.) The congress also issued decrees calling for the transfer of land from landlords to the peasants, the separation of church and state, and self-determination for all national groups in the former empire. Most Bolsheviks saw the last move as a temporary concession that would be superseded by the formation of a world proletarian state.

The Bolsheviks permitted elections to the Constituent Assembly, which was to draft a democratic constitution, only to dissolve the assembly in January 1918 when they did not win a majority of seats. A constitution favoring Bolshevik control was then drafted, and in July 1918 the Congress of Soviets approved the first constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

A

1

Peace Treaty

Lenin was convinced that a speedy exit from the war was unavoidable, given the war-weariness of the population and the fragmentation of the imperial armed forces. Germany and the other Central Powers, eager to take Russia out of the conflict, agreed to open negotiations in December 1917 at Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus). The peace terms proved unacceptable to the Bolsheviks, and the talks broke down in January 1918. A German military advance on Petrograd (later Leningrad, then Saint Petersburg) helped persuade the Bolshevik leaders to create the Red Army, move their capital from Petrograd to Moscow, and reopen the talks. In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluded on March 3, 1918, the Bolsheviks agreed to relinquish control over certain areas formerly annexed by the Russian Empire (including Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic lands) and pay heavy indemnities to Germany.

The treaty led to a schism within the infant government. The Left Social Revolutionary Party, which had been collaborating with the Bolsheviks, declared it a betrayal of the revolution and walked out of the Council of People’s Commissars. Activists in the party assassinated the German ambassador to Moscow, in the vain hope of stirring the Germans to renew hostilities, and made attempts on the lives of several Bolshevik leaders. Lenin was critically wounded by one of the terrorists, receiving an injury that contributed to his early death. The Bolsheviks, in return, launched the so-called Red Terror, suppressing the Left Social Revolutionaries and executing many political opponents. As other minority parties and factions were eliminated one by one, the Soviet system emerged as a one-party state.

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