Soviet Union

The Soviet Union (Советский Союз, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик) abbreviated to USSR (СССР) was a socialist state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 1922 and 1991. A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The Soviet Union was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital.

New Releases Tagged "Soviet Union"

World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews

Most Read This Week Tagged "Soviet Union"

The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West

The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921

What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork

Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West

The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War

Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Red Closet: The Hidden History of Gay Oppression in the USSR

Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Stalin's War: A New History of World War II

More most read this week tagged "soviet union"...

Soviet Union Books

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

More soviet union books...

Lists

Fraud, Famine and Fascism by Douglas Tottle

The Ukrainian famine-genocide myth by John Puntis

Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion by Sol Littman

Ukrainophobic Books - Українофобські книги

48 books — 3 voters

Novels with Socialist undertones

62 books — 27 voters

The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford

Cold War Literature for Young Adults

46 books — 23 voters

The Triumph of Improvisation by James Graham Wilson

Cold War-Reagan Era

17 books — 19 voters

The Billion Dollar Spy by David E. Hoffman

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

The Cold War (nonfiction)

357 books — 103 voters

Chinese Brutalism Today by Alberto Bologna

Brutalist Architecture

61 books — 1 voter

Related Genres

History
Russia
Communism
Russian History
Russian Revolution

Rússia
Russian Empire
Russian Federation
Hìstory
Hiśtory

Featured News & Interviews

Get Ready! Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2026

Read »

Quotes Tagged “Soviet Union”

“ If the Russian people and the Russian elite remembered - viscerally, emotionally remembered - what Stalin did to the Chechens, they could not have invaded Chechnya in the 1990s, not once and not twice. To do so was the moral equivalent of postwar Germany invading western Poland. Very few Russians saw it that way - which is itself evidence of how little they know about their own history. ”
― Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History

13 likes

“ Political developments in the former Soviet republics were set to benefit people of a nationalist persuasion. This was a completely natural state of affairs and typically occurs after the collapse of an empire. If you wanted your party to get more votes, you could gain electoral support by saying something along the lines of "Russian occupiers, get out of our land and go back to your Moscow." It was not that all local people turned out to hate Russians, just that the U.S.S.R. had for so long sup Political developments in the former Soviet republics were set to benefit people of a nationalist persuasion. This was a completely natural state of affairs and typically occurs after the collapse of an empire. If you wanted your party to get more votes, you could gain electoral support by saying something along the lines of "Russian occupiers, get out of our land and go back to your Moscow." It was not that all local people turned out to hate Russians, just that the U.S.S.R. had for so long suppressed every manifestation of nationalism, trying to brainwash everybody with its hypocritical nonsense about the friendship of the peoples and how the fifteen republics were fifteen sisters. It was inevitable that the pendulum would swing in the opposite direction. Nationalism became all the rage. The years of having everything controlled from Moscow led to a wholesale rejection of anything that seemed like the legacy of empire. "We have finally broken free from the dictatorship of Russia, and anyone who lives in our country and looks to Russia is a fifth columnist and an enemy." That was the real geopolitical disaster, but it was only much later that everyone realized it. The new leaders, among whom Putin and his ilk were in the third or fourth tier, totally ignored the problem of Russians stranded outside the country. A huge number of conflicts could have been averted and lives saved if the government of the time had proposed even the most basic programs for the return of Russians to whatever was still Russian territory. Naturally, nobody would have been in any hurry to return there from the prosperous Baltic States, and in that respect other approaches would have been needed. But to the perplexed questions of those living in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and many other republics-Where do we belong now? What are we supposed to do?-there should have been some answer. It is extraordinary that even now, when the issue of "Russophobia" and the infringement of the rights of Russians has become practically the top priority on the Kremlin's agenda, everything remains on the level of barefaced, hypocritical demagoguery, behind which there is not the slightest constructive action. Somebody born into a Russian family outside Russia will be driven crazy negotiating their way through the bureaucratic machinery before obtaining citizenship of their own country. In 2008, I proposed a bill stipulating that anyone who had in their ancestry a Russian, or a representative of another of the indigenous peoples of Russia, would automatically be entitled to citizenship on presentation of any document confirming that national identity. It might be the birth certificate of a grandparent. There was nothing revolutionary about the suggestion. It was analogous to laws that exist in Germany and Israel. Neither that proposal nor dozens of similar ones were accepted. The current regime prefers endlessly to talk about oppressed Russians while doing nothing to help them. ...more ”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

0 likes

More quotes...