60 Fun Facts About Soviet Union

What does the Russian word 'sovet', the root of 'soviet', mean?

Workers' councils by that name first appeared during the 1905 Revolution and re-emerged in 1917 to share power with the Provisional Government.

In which year was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed?

The Russian SFSR and its subordinate republics merged after the Bolshevik victory in the civil war; the state lasted until 1991.

How many other countries did the Soviet Union border?

It was the largest country by area and third most populous, covering about a sixth of Earth's land surface.

How many union republics did the USSR consist of from 1956 until its dissolution?

The number varied from 4 to 16 over time; the Karelo-Finnish SSR lost its union status in 1956 and was absorbed into Russia.

Which union republic was demoted in 1956 to an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR?

Its population was by then about 80 percent Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, and the decision was taken without consulting residents.

Which three Baltic republics maintain that their 1940 incorporation into the USSR was illegal occupation?

Their position rests on the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and is backed by the European Union and European Court of Human Rights.

On the Soviet flag, what did the hammer represent?

The sickle stood for the peasants; together they symbolised the alliance of the two classes said to form the state.

The red of the Soviet flag honoured the banner of which 1871 uprising?

The plain red flag was a revolutionary symbol long before 1917; the hammer and sickle were the modern industrial addition.

What change did a 1980 amendment make to the Soviet flag?

The legal description of the flag was left unchanged; the 1955 design was the basis for all the union republics' flags.

Which song served as the Soviet national anthem before 1944?

A new anthem was needed after the Comintern was dissolved in 1943 to reassure the wartime Allies; more than 200 entries were submitted.

For roughly how long after 1956 was the Soviet anthem performed without any lyrics?

The original words praised the by-then disgraced Stalin; Sergey Mikhalkov, who wrote them, also wrote the 1977 replacement.

Who composed the music of the Soviet anthem, originally as the Hymn of the Bolshevik Party?

Stalin personally chose the tune, and the melody survives today as the anthem of the Russian Federation.

What was the birth surname of Vladimir Lenin?

His birthplace, Simbirsk on the Volga, was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour.

What 1887 family event pushed the young Lenin towards revolutionary politics?

Aleksandr Ulyanov was hanged for plotting against the Tsar; Lenin was expelled from Kazan University the same year for protesting.

To which Siberian village was Lenin exiled in 1897, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya?

He had moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and was arrested for sedition four years later.

In which town in Georgia was Joseph Stalin born?

His birth name was Ioseb Jughashvili; he was the only one of his parents' three children to survive infancy.

For what career was the teenage Stalin training at the Tiflis Theological Seminary?

He took the nickname 'Koba' from the bandit hero of Alexander Kazbegi's novel The Patricide.

How did the young Stalin raise funds for Lenin's Bolshevik faction?

His 1907 raid on a bank stagecoach in Tiflis killed around 40 people.

On what date did Stalin die?

His death triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev prevailed over Beria and Malenkov.

Between which years did the Soviet Union carry out the collectivisation of agriculture?

By February 1930 more than half of peasant households were in collective farms, up from 7.5 percent four months earlier.

What term did the Bolsheviks use for better-off peasants who owned several animals and hired labourers?

They were blamed for grain shortages and targeted for 'liquidation as a class' during collectivisation.

What does the Ukrainian word 'Holodomor' mean?

The 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine has been recognised as a genocide by Ukraine and more than 30 other UN states since 2006.

Whose 1934 assassination gave Stalin the pretext for the Moscow show trials and the Great Purge?

The Leningrad party boss was shot by Leonid Nikolaev; historians still argue over whether Stalin arranged it.

The Great Purge is nicknamed the 'Yezhovshchina' after which man?

Nikolai Yezhov headed the NKVD from September 1936 to August 1938 and was himself executed after Stalin reversed course.

What is the scholarly estimate of the death toll of the Great Purge?

Being expelled from the party, once a routine matter, came to mean near-certain arrest and often execution between 1936 and 1953.

What does the acronym GULAG stand for?

The agency was set up in 1930 under the OGPU; the camp system was officially abolished on 25 January 1960.

Which Nobel laureate's 1973 book The Gulag Archipelago gave the camp system its international notoriety?

He survived eight years in the camps and likened them to 'a chain of islands'.

Roughly how many Soviet deaths did World War II cause, the most of any country?

Germany's 1941 invasion was the largest land invasion in history and opened the Eastern Front.

What did the USSR sign with Nazi Germany in 1939 after failing to build an anti-Nazi coalition?

Its secret protocol carved up Eastern Europe; the Soviets invaded Poland later that September.

On what date was the Warsaw Pact established?

It was the Eastern Bloc's answer to West Germany joining NATO; its only joint military action was the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Which Warsaw Pact member formally withdrew in September 1968, a month after Czechoslovakia was invaded?

It had already stopped supporting the pact in 1961 after siding with China in the Sino-Soviet split; Romania refused to join the invasion but stayed a member.

At which 1956 event did Khrushchev deliver the 'Secret Speech' denouncing Stalin?

Delivered on 25 February 1956, it launched de-Stalinisation and a less repressive era, though it strained relations with Mao's China.

Which crop did Khrushchev champion so hard that he set up a dedicated institute in Ukraine?

He wanted an Iowa-style belt in the USSR and sent a delegation to that state in 1955, where seed salesman Roswell Garst won them over.

Where did Khrushchev and Nixon hold their impromptu 1959 debate on their economic systems?

Nixon then invited Khrushchev to the United States, where he spent thirteen days that September, family in tow.

On what date was Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, launched?

The polished 58 cm sphere beeped for three weeks before its batteries died, and burned up on re-entry in January 1958.

How long did each orbit of Sputnik 1 take?

It travelled at around 8 km/s and its 65-degree inclination carried it over virtually all inhabited Earth.

Where had Laika, the dog aboard Sputnik 2, been found?

Scientists chose strays because they assumed such dogs could already endure cold and hunger; she died of overheating hours into the flight.

How long did Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight last?

He completed a single orbit on 12 April 1961 and was later barred from further spaceflights for fear of losing a national hero.

What aircraft was Gagarin flying when he died in 1968?

He had only just been cleared to fly again after finishing at the Zhukovsky Academy five weeks earlier.

In which present-day country is the Baikonur Cosmodrome, launch site of both Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1?

Russia leases it; the pad used for both launches is now called 'Gagarin's Start'.

Which Soviet space station was the only one in operation from 1986 to 1998?

American modules were later added; it deteriorated after an on-board fire and was deorbited in 2001.

How long did Brezhnev serve as General Secretary, second only to Stalin in duration?

He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov; the doctrine bearing his name justified intervening in any bloc state where 'socialist rule' was threatened.

What does the Russian word 'perestroika' literally mean?

Gorbachev first used the word in a speech in December 1984, three months before taking power; glasnost was the companion policy of transparency.

What was Gorbachev's job as a young man before he joined the Communist Party?

He was born in Privolnoye in the North Caucasus in 1931 and took a law degree at Moscow State University in 1955.

On what date did reactor 4 at Chernobyl explode?

The plant near Pripyat in Ukraine was run from Moscow, so even the Ukrainian government was slow to learn what had happened.

Which purpose-built city replaced the abandoned Pripyat for Chernobyl's workers?

The concrete sarcophagus over the reactor was finished in December 1986 and enclosed by the New Safe Confinement in 2016–18.

How many hospitalised Chernobyl workers died of acute radiation syndrome within three months?

It remains the only case in commercial nuclear power history of radiation-related deaths among workers and emergency responders.

In which Crimean resort was Gorbachev on holiday when hardliners launched their coup in August 1991?

He had planned to return to Moscow to sign a New Union Treaty on 20 August; the coup began the day before.

What was the popular nickname of the State Committee on the State of Emergency that staged the 1991 coup?

Vice President Gennady Yanayev fronted it, while KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov had been planning it since 1990.

Which three republics' leaders signed the Belovezha Accords declaring the USSR effectively dissolved?

Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich met at a state dacha near Viskuli on 8 December 1991 and set up the Commonwealth of Independent States.

On what date did Gorbachev resign and hand the nuclear codes to Boris Yeltsin?

That evening the Soviet flag came down from the Kremlin for the last time; the Supreme Soviet formally dissolved the union the next day.

On what date was the KGB officially dissolved?

Its Russian successors are the FSB and the SVR, while Belarus and South Ossetia kept the KGB name for their own agencies.

Over what period was the KGB the Soviet Union's main security agency?

It succeeded the Cheka, OGPU and NKVD, and its chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov led the failed 1991 coup.

How many post-Soviet states kept using the Soviet ruble in a 'ruble zone' until 1993?

Soviet banknotes carried text in the languages of all fifteen union republics.

Which mountain, then named for Communism, was the highest point in the USSR?

It stands 7,495 metres; the union also held Lake Baikal, the world's deepest and largest-by-volume freshwater lake.

The Soviet Union stretched east to west across how many time zones?

The country spanned more than 10,000 km from west to east and over 7,200 km from north to south.

At which Games did Soviet athletes make their Olympic debut?

The Soviet Olympic Committee had only been formed in April 1951 and was recognised by the IOC the same year.

What was the codename of the first Soviet nuclear test, carried out in 1949?

The test came four years after the American Trinity detonation and made the USSR the world's second nuclear power.

Which state agency drew up the Soviet Union's five-year economic plans?

Plan targets and allocated resources were usually denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods.

Which economic bloc, founded in 1949, was Moscow's answer to the Marshall Plan and the OEEC?

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance lasted until 1991 and the Warsaw Pact served as its military complement.