256-729: The history of the Soviet Union (USSR) (1922–91) began with the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War , the Soviet Union quickly became a one-party state under the Communist Party . Its early years under Lenin were marked by the implementation of socialist policies and
512-430: A Marxist faction and non-communist socialists or the right-wing of socialism during the split with communism . Others have noted its pejorative use among communists and other socialists. According to Lyman Tower Sargent , " socialism refers to social theories rather than to theories oriented to the individual. Because many communists now call themselves democratic socialists , it is sometimes difficult to know what
768-568: A crisis with the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba . An agreement was made with the United States to remove nuclear missiles from both Cuba and Turkey , concluding the crisis. This event caused Khrushchev much embarrassment and loss of prestige, resulting in his removal from power in 1964. The history of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, referred to as
1024-633: A de-Stalinization process, leading to a period of liberalization and relative openness known as the Khrushchev Thaw . However, the subsequent era under Leonid Brezhnev , referred to as the Era of Stagnation , was marked by economic decline, political corruption, and a rigid gerontocracy . Despite efforts to maintain the Soviet Union's superpower status, the economy struggled due to its centralized nature, technological backwardness, and inefficiencies. The vast military expenditures and burdens of maintaining
1280-594: A famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system of the Gulag was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact , but in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening
1536-496: A political and economic democracy supporting a gradualist , reformist , and democratic approach towards achieving socialism. Others view it as an ethical ideal to guide reforms within capitalism. One way social democracy can be distinguished from democratic socialism is that social democracy aims to strike a balance by advocating for a mixed market economy where capitalism is regulated to address inequalities through social welfare programs and supports private ownership with
1792-591: A post-capitalist economic system based on either a market economy combined with workers' self-management or on some form of participatory , decentralized planning of the economy. Marxian socialists argue that social democratic welfare policies cannot resolve the fundamental structural issues of capitalism, such as cyclical fluctuations , exploitation , and alienation . Accordingly, social democratic programs intended to ameliorate living conditions in capitalism, such as unemployment benefits and taxation on profits, creates further contradictions by further limiting
2048-566: A post-capitalist order or, in more ethical terms, as a just society, described as representing democratic socialism, without any explicit reference to the economic system or its structure. Parties such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Swedish Social Democratic Party describe their goal as developing democratic socialism, with social democracy as the principle of action. In
2304-452: A Labour Government in office and Labour pressure in opposition. Against the dogged resistance to change, we should have pitted a stronger will to change. I conclude that a move to the Left is needed". In Origin, Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties: East-Central and Western Europe Compared , Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopecek explain how socialist parties have evolved from the 19th to
2560-541: A closer relationship with France and Britain. In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement , the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain. Adolf Hitler proposed a better deal, which would give the USSR control over much of Eastern Europe through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . In September, Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR also invaded later that month, resulting in
2816-454: A complex shift in political, cultural, and economic life in the country. This included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing a dramatic rise in living standards while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. In 1962, he precipitated
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#17327654072303072-879: A conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR , the Transcaucasian SFSR , the Ukrainian SSR , and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR , forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the first Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of
3328-426: A failed state, with record unemployment levels and the fact that many young people will not find a job in their lifetime. Social democracy rests on three fundamental features, namely: "(1) parliamentary democracy, (2) an economy partly regulated by the state, and (3) provision of social support to those in need". In practice, social democratic parties have been instrumental in the social-liberal paradigm, lasting from
3584-405: A famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian , the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1 million tons (1913) to 46.5 million tons (1920). On 28 December 1922,
3840-442: A fleet of strategic bombers and during war situation was to eradicate enemy infrastructure and nuclear capacity. The air force also had a number of fighters and tactical bombers to support the army in the war. Strategic missile forces had more than 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed between 28 bases and 300 command centers. Social democracy Social democracy (often shortened to socdem or SocDem)
4096-409: A gradual or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one. Policies commonly supported are Keynesian and include some degree of regulation over the economy , social insurance schemes, public pension programs, and a gradual expansion of public ownership over major and strategic industries. During the late 20th century, those labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to
4352-467: A greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии , romanized : Soyuz Sovyetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii ). Joseph Stalin initially resisted Lenin's proposal but ultimately accepted it, and with Lenin's agreement he changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although all republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to
4608-447: A law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum. Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the ' War of Laws '. In 1989, the Russian SFSR convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin
4864-423: A limited scale. Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR ), commonly known as the Soviet Union , was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area , extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries , and the third-most populous country . An overall successor to
5120-680: A military alliance, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955, and an economic organization, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon , a counterpart to the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1949 to 1991. Although nominally a "defensive" alliance, the Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard the Soviet Union's hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the Pact's only direct military actions having been
5376-485: A more satisfying life for most people". Socialism became a catch-all term for the critics of capitalism and industrial society. Social democrats are anticapitalists insofar as criticism about "poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality, and a lack of economic security" is linked to the private ownership of the means of production . Social democracy or social democratic remains controversial among socialists. Some define it as representing
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#17327654072305632-611: A neoliberal form of government have registered relatively poorer results. Similarly, several reports have listed Scandinavian and other social democratic countries as ranking high on indicators such as civil liberties , democracy , press , labour and economic freedoms, peace , and freedom from corruption . Numerous studies and surveys indicate that people live happier lives in countries ruled by social democratic parties than those ruled by neoliberal, centrist, and right-wing governments. Other socialists criticize social democracy because it serves to devise new means to strengthen
5888-597: A new profitable market. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Marxist-Leninist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-Marxist political parties, labour unions or other organizations on the left, which they labelled social fascists . In the usage of the Soviet Union, and of the Comintern and its affiliated parties in this period, the epithet fascist was used to describe capitalist society in general and virtually any anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist activity or opinion. Stalin reversed himself in 1934 with
6144-643: A new trade agreement between the two countries. In September 1934, the country joined the League of Nations . After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists , who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany . In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new constitution that was praised by supporters around the world as
6400-707: A number of assassination attempts on Bolshevik senior leaders and organized insurrections against the Soviet government. The federalization of Russia was promulgated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia in November, not including the detached borderlands. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers , though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March,
6656-606: A policy regime. They call the first classical social democracy or classical socialism , and the latter as competitive socialism , liberal socialism , neo-social democracy , or new social democracy . Many socialist parties in several countries have been, or are called Social Democratic . In the 19th century, social democrat was a broad catch-all for international socialists owing their primary ideological allegiance to Lassalle or Marx, in contrast to those advocating various forms of utopian socialism . Many parties in this era described themselves as Social Democrats , including
6912-423: A political label really means. As a result, social democratic has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties." As a policy regime, social democracy entails support for a mixed economy and ameliorative measures to benefit the working class within the framework of democratic capitalism . Social democracy currently depicts a chiefly capitalist economy with state economic regulation in
7168-409: A prelude to fully developing socialism in the country, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s, and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax. From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . The stated purpose was to prevent
7424-454: A qualitatively different socialist economic system . Since then, social democracy has been associated with Keynesian economics , the Nordic model , and welfare states . Social democracy has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism. Amongst social democrats, attitudes towards socialism vary: some retain socialism as a long-term goal, with social democracy being
7680-707: A resolution in favour of the Bolshevik demand for the transfer of power to the Soviets. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , pushed for communist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets, adopting the slogan of "All Power to the Soviets" and urging the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On 7 November 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, arresting
7936-458: A result, no further radical economic reforms were implemented during the Brezhnev era, leading to economic stagnation by the early-to-mid-1970s. By Brezhnev's death in 1982, Soviet economic growth had nearly come to a standstill. During this period, Brezhnev consolidated power, and by the early 1970s, he had established himself as the preeminent Soviet leader. The stabilization policy established
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8192-564: A revolutionary road to socialism. In the 20th century, the term came to be associated with the positions of the German and Swedish parties. The first advocated revisionist Marxism , while the second advocated a comprehensive welfare state . By the 21st century, parties advocating social democracy include Labour, Left, and some Green parties. Most social democratic parties consider themselves democratic socialists and are categorized as socialists. They continue to reference socialism, either as
8448-544: A robust welfare state , policies promoting social equality , and a more equitable distribution of income . Social democracy maintains a commitment to representative and participatory democracy . Common aims include curbing inequality , eliminating the oppression of underprivileged groups, eradicating poverty , and upholding universally accessible public services such as child care , education , elderly care , health care , and workers' compensation . Economically, it supports income redistribution and regulating
8704-644: A ruling gerontocracy , and political corruption became increasingly prevalent. Despite this, Brezhnev never launched any large-scale anti-corruption campaigns. The Soviet Union, thanks to the military buildup of the 1960s, solidified its status as a superpower during Brezhnev's rule. However, this era was also marked by the Era of Stagnation , a period characterized by economic, political, and social decline, which persisted under Brezhnev's successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko . The Brezhnev Era also witnessed significant international actions, including
8960-526: A secret protocol that paved the way for the Soviet invasion of Eastern European states and occupation of their territories . The pact made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia , Bessarabia, northern Bukovina , and eastern Poland . In the far east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Empire of Japan in 1938 and 1939. However, in April 1941,
9216-404: A socialist form of private property as part of new socialism (although Corfe technically objects to private property as a term to collectively describe property that is not publicly owned as being vague) and rejecting state socialism as a failure. Third Way social democracy was formed in response to what its proponents saw as a crisis in the legitimacy of socialism—especially state socialism—and
9472-631: A status that is retained by the Russian Federation . Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America . Two other successor states, Kazakhstan and Ukraine , rank among the top 10 countries by land area, and the largest country entirely in Europe, respectively. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to
9728-421: A strong emphasis on a well-regulated market. In contrast, democratic socialism places greater emphasis on abolishing private property ownership . Nevertheless, the distinction remains blurred and the two terms are commonly used synonymously. The Third Way is an off-shoot of social democracy which aims to fuse economic liberalism with social democratic economic policies and center-left social policies. It
9984-734: A third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev . In addition to the failing economy, the prolonged war in Afghanistan led to increased public dissatisfaction with the Communist government. Also, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 added motive force to Gorbachev's reforms. He made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called perestroika . His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end
10240-475: A union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by Russians . The domination was so absolute that for most of its existence, the country was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as 'Russia'. While the Russian SFSR was technically only one republic within the larger union, it was by far the largest (both in terms of population and area), most powerful, and most highly developed. The Russian SFSR
10496-438: Is a social , economic , and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist , reformist and democratic approach toward achieving socialism. In modern practice, social democracy has taken the form of predominantly capitalist economies, with the state regulating the economy in the form of welfare capitalism , economic interventionism , partial public ownership ,
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10752-486: Is a reconceptualization of social democracy developed in the 1990s and embraced by some social democratic parties; some analysts have characterized the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement. Social democracy is defined as one of many socialist traditions . As an international political movement and ideology , it aims to achieve socialism through gradual and democratic means. This definition goes back to
11008-522: Is conflated either with the pink tide in Latin America, especially with Venezuela, or with communism in the form of Marxist–Leninist socialism as practised in the Soviet Union and other self-declared socialist states . Democratic socialism has been described as representing the left-wing or socialist tradition of the New Deal . The lack of a strong and influential socialist movement in
11264-573: Is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет ), meaning 'council', 'assembly', 'advice', ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of * vět-iti ('to inform'), related to Slavic věst ('news'), English wise . The word sovietnik means 'councillor'. Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет ). In the Russian Empire ,
11520-591: Is his background, his education , his profession . These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror ." During his rule, Stalin always made the final policy decisions. Otherwise, Soviet foreign policy was set by the commission on the Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , or by
11776-687: Is known in Russia and some other post-Soviet states as the Great Patriotic War . The Red Army stopped the seemingly invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow . The Battle of Stalingrad , which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to Germany from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point in the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 . The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in
12032-442: Is loosely held to be valuable for its emphasis on changing the world for a more just, better future. During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, social democracy was a broad labour movement within socialism that aimed to replace private ownership with social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange , taking influence from both Marxism and the supporters of Ferdinand Lassalle . By 1868–1869,
12288-448: Is seen as inequality and oppression that laissez-faire capitalism causes. In the 21st century, it has become commonplace to define social democracy in reference to Northern and Western European countries, and their model of a welfare state with a corporatist system of collective bargaining . Social democracy has also been used synonymously with the Nordic model . Henning Meyer and Jonathan Rutherford associate social democracy with
12544-408: Is that of advancing those values within a capitalist market economy , as its support for a mixed economy no longer denotes the coexistence between private and public ownership or that between planning and market mechanisms but rather, it represents free markets combined with government intervention and regulations . As a form of reformist democratic socialism , social democracy rejects
12800-437: Is that socialists see the welfare state "not merely to provide benefits but to build the foundation for emancipation and self-determination". In the 21st century, a social democratic policy regime may further be distinguished by a support for an increase in welfare policies or an increase in public services . Some distinguish between ideological social democracy as part of the broad socialist movement and social democracy as
13056-494: Is with a quite different form of society that socialists must now concern themselves. Pre-war anti-capitalism will give us very little help", for a new kind of capitalism required a new kind of socialism. Crosland believed that these features of reformed managerial capitalism were irreversible, but it has been argued within the Labour Party and by others that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought about its reversal in
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#173276540723013312-808: The Allied victory in World War II , but at a tremendous human cost, with millions of Soviet citizens perishing in the conflict. The Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, leading the Eastern Bloc in opposition to the Western Bloc during the Cold War . This period saw the USSR engage in an arms race, the Space Race , and proxy wars around the globe. The post-Stalin leadership, particularly under Nikita Khrushchev , initiated
13568-513: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty , while simultaneously building up Soviet military might. In 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. One of the Soviet economy's key strengths during this period was its vast oil and gas reserves. The quadrupling of world oil prices during the 1973 oil crisis and another rise in the late 1970s made the energy sector the chief driver of the Soviet economy. This revenue
13824-615: The Bolshevik Initial Decrees , government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan , which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of Russia. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931. After the economic policy of ' War communism ' during the Russian Civil War, as
14080-562: The Central Committee and forced into exile. In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy . In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country . In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization . In agriculture , rather than adhering to
14336-520: The Council of People's Commissars ), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society. State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of
14592-606: The Eastern Front of World War II . The Soviets played a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers , suffering an estimated 27 million casualties , which accounted for most Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war , the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army , forming satellite states , and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower . Geopolitical tensions with
14848-673: The European Economic Community because it demanded a free-market economy among its members. Public ownership never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation , further dropping to 8% in the 1980s and below 5% in the 1990s after the rise of neoliberalism. The collapse of the legitimacy of state socialism and Keynesian interventionism (with the discovery of the phenomenon of stagflation ) has been an issue for social democracy. This has provoked re-thinking of how socialism should be achieved by social democrats, including changing views by social democrats on private property—anti-Third Way social democrats such as Robert Corfe have advocated
15104-822: The General German Workers' Association and the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany , which merged to form the Social Democratic Party of Germany , the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . Social Democrat continued to be used in this context until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, when Communist came into vogue for individuals and organizations espousing
15360-651: The German Empire between the 1880s and 1890s, when the conservative Chancellor Otto von Bismarck put in place many social welfare proposals initially suggested by the Social Democrats to hinder their electoral success after he instituted the Anti-Socialist Laws , laying the ground of the first modern welfare state . Those policies were dubbed State Socialism by the liberal opposition, but Bismarck later accepted and re-appropriated
15616-728: The Great Depression , economic interventionism and nationalizations became more common worldwide and the post-war consensus until the 1970s saw Keynesian social democratic and mixed economy policies put in place, leading to the post-World War II boom in which the United States, the Soviet Union, the Western European, and East Asian countries experienced unusually high and sustained economic growth , together with full employment . Contrary to early predictions, this period of high economic growth and national development also included many countries that were devastated by
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#173276540723015872-613: The Great Recession in the late 2000s and early 2010s cast doubts on the Washington Consensus , and protests against austerity measures ensued. There was a resurgence of social democratic parties and policies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the rise of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn , who rejected the Third Way, after the economic recession caused
16128-474: The Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism . Some social democratic Third Way figures such as Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair , who has described himself as a Christian socialist and a socialist in ethical terms, insist that they are socialists, for they claim to believe in the same values that their anti-Third Way critics do. According to those self-proclaimed social democratic modernizers, Clause IV 's open advocacy of state socialism
16384-476: The Land Forces , the Air Force , the Navy , Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) and the Internal Troops . The OGPU later became independent and in 1934 joined the NKVD secret police, and so its internal troops were under the joint leadership of the defense and internal commissariats. After World War II, Strategic Missile Forces (1959), Air Defense Forces (1948) and National Civil Defense Forces (1970) were formed, which ranked first, third, and sixth in
16640-454: The Moscow State Institute of International Relations . The Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and changed directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates, and he frequently changed positions. During the country's early period, it was assumed that Communist revolutions would break out soon in every major industrial country, and it
16896-450: The NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people in 1937 and 1938, of whom 681,692 were shot. Over those two years, there were an average of over one thousand executions a day. Scholars estimate the total death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938), including fatalities attributed to prison conditions, to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. In 1939, after attempts to form a military alliance with Britain and France against Germany failed,
17152-411: The National Health Service and Labour's welfare state development. This social-liberal paradigm represented the post-war consensus and was accepted across the political spectrum by conservatives, liberals and socialists until the 1970s. Similarly, the neoliberal paradigm, which replaced the previous paradigm, was accepted across the mainstream political parties, including social democratic supporters of
17408-410: The New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed for market-oriented reforms. The rise of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s ushered in an era of intense centralization and totalitarianism. Stalin's rule was characterized by the forced collectivization of agriculture , rapid industrialization , and the Great Purge , which eliminated perceived enemies of the state. The Soviet Union played a crucial role in
17664-590: The October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin , established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally socialist state . The revolution was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic , resulting in the Russian Civil War . The RSFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth but contributed to
17920-535: The Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia , was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones , and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra , taiga , steppes , desert and mountains . The USSR, like Russia , had the world's longest border , measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it
18176-439: The Pasokification of many social democratic parties. The United Nations World Happiness Report shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in social democratic nations, especially in Northern Europe, where the Nordic model is applied. This is at times attributed to the success of the social democratic Nordic model in the region, where similar democratic socialist , labourist , and social democratic parties dominated
18432-790: The Popular Front program that called on all Marxist parties to join with all anti-Fascist political, labour, and organizational forces that were opposed to fascism , especially of the Nazi variety. The rapid growth of power in Nazi Germany encouraged both Paris and Moscow to form a military alliance, and the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance was signed in May 1935. A firm believer in collective security, Stalin's foreign minister Maxim Litvinov worked very hard to form
18688-863: The Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I. At the same time, workers' councils , known in Russian as ' Soviets ', sprang up across the country, and the most influential of them, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies , shared power with the Provisional Government. Membership of the Bolshevik party had risen from 24,000 members in February 1917 to 200,000 members by September 1917. 50,000 workers had passed
18944-546: The Russian Empire began with the 1825 Decembrist revolt . Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavourable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament, the State Duma , was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905 , but Emperor Nicholas II resisted attempts to move from absolute to a constitutional monarchy . Social unrest continued and
19200-421: The Russian Empire , it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics , the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR . In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized . As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , it was a flagship communist state . Its capital and largest city was Moscow . The Soviet Union's roots lay in
19456-537: The Russian SFSR , and Joseph Stalin , of the Transcaucasian SFSR . In February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the United Kingdom. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union. According to Archie Brown the constitution was never an accurate guide to political reality in the USSR. For example, the fact that the Party played the leading role in making and enforcing policy
19712-581: The Soviet republics , and the control of the Communist Party weakened. The failed coup attempt in August 1991 against Gorbachev by hardline communists hastened the end of the Soviet Union , which formally dissolved on December 26, 1991, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule. With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest country,
19968-514: The Soviet–Afghan War beginning in 1979, which effectively ended the period of détente with the West. The long period of Brezhnev's rule culminated in his death on 10 November 1982. By this time, the Soviet Union had become increasingly stagnant, with an ageing leadership resistant to change and a deteriorating economy. Moreover, the Soviet Union's failure to modernize its economy, particularly in
20224-772: The State Council , which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers. The Soviets as workers' councils first appeared during the 1905 Russian Revolution . Although they were quickly suppressed by the Imperial army, after the February Revolution of 1917 , workers' and soldiers' Soviets emerged throughout the country and shared power with the Russian Provisional Government . The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , demanded that all power be transferred to
20480-635: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), saying that it was "overly juridical" and potentially infringed on national sovereignty. The Soviet Union later signed legally-binding human rights documents, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973 (and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ), but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by
20736-442: The economic and technological determinism generally characteristic of orthodox Marxism and economic liberalism . By the post- World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion , most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism . According to Michael Harrington ,
20992-769: The largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world . As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations as well as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council . Before its dissolution, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomatic and ideological influence (particularly in the Global South ), military and economic strengths, and scientific accomplishments. The word soviet
21248-664: The murder of the former emperor and his family , and the famine of 1921–1922 , which killed about five million people. Although Lenin had declared his support for the principle of self-determination , the party became centralized and the independent Soviet republics were subordinated to Soviet Russia. In March 1921, the Treaty of Riga was signed with the Republic of Poland , splitting territories in Belarus and Ukraine , and putting an end to Lenin's westward offensive against capitalism. In Estonia , Finland , Latvia , and Lithuania ,
21504-485: The right to food , the right to work , and the right to education . The Soviet conception of human rights was very different from international law . According to Soviet legal theory , "it is the government who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the individual". The Soviet state was considered as the source of human rights. Therefore, the Soviet legal system considered law an arm of politics and it also considered courts agencies of
21760-419: The 'lead by example' policy advocated by Lenin, forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country. Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks (wealthy or middle-class peasants) were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor . Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s,
22016-650: The 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union , concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR , to himself. Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling
22272-459: The 1940s and 1970s, and called such because it was developed by social liberals but implemented by social democrats. Since those policies were mostly implemented by social democrats, social liberalism is sometimes called social democracy . In Britain, the social-liberal Beveridge Report drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge influenced the Labour Party 's social policies, such as
22528-424: The 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded its efforts in space exploration and took a lead in the Space Race with the first artificial satellite , the first human spaceflight , the first space station , and the first probe to land on another planet . In 1985, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev , sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost and perestroika . In 1989, various countries of
22784-577: The 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring reforms. Brezhnev justified this and future interventions with the Brezhnev Doctrine , which stated that any threat to Soviet rule in a Warsaw Pact state was a threat to all Warsaw Pact states, thus justifying military intervention. Brezhnev presided over a period of détente with the West, leading to treaties on arms control such as SALT I , SALT II , and
23040-458: The 1970s and 1980s. Although the post-war consensus represented a period where social democracy was "most buoyant", it has been argued that "post-war social democracy had been altogether too confident in its analysis" because "gains which were thought to be permanent turned out to be conditional and as the reservoir of capitalist growth showed signs of drying up". In Socialism Now (1974), Crosland argued that "[m]uch more should have been achieved by
23296-550: The 1990s, people in the West were also interested in the radioactive hazards of nuclear facilities, decommissioned nuclear submarines , and the processing of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel . It was also known in the early 1990s that the USSR had transported radioactive material to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea , which was later confirmed by the Russian parliament. The crash of the K-141 Kursk submarine in 2000 in
23552-432: The 19th century, social democracy could be described as "organized Marxism", it became "organized reformism" by the 20th century. In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are sometimes seen as synonyms, while they are distinguished in journalistic use. Under this democratic socialist definition, social democracy is an ideology seeking to gradually build an alternative socialist economy through
23808-439: The 19th-century labour movement . Originally a catch-all term for socialists of varying tendencies, after the Russian Revolution , it came to refer to reformist socialists that are opposed to the authoritarian and centralized Soviet model of socialism. In the post-war era, social democrats embraced mixed economies with a predominance of private property and promoted the regulation of capitalism over its replacement with
24064-593: The 21st century, European social democratic parties represent the centre-left and most are part of the Party of European Socialists , while democratic socialist parties are to their left within the Party of the European Left . Many of those social democratic parties are members of the Socialist International , including several democratic socialist parties, whose Frankfurt Declaration declares
24320-477: The 2nd. In late November, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad , Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland . On 14 December 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland. Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 starting what
24576-939: The Allies at the Yalta Conference , broke the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945 which Japan had been honoring despite their alliance with Germany, and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on 9 August 1945. This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that
24832-643: The Brezhnev Era, covers the period of Leonid Brezhnev 's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation. The average annual income stagnated because needed economic reforms were never fully carried out. Following the ousting of Nikita Khrushchev on 14 October 1964, Brezhnev replaced him as First Secretary , and Alexei Kosygin took over as Chairman of
25088-526: The CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees , local Soviets and executive committees . While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary. The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies ) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Red Terror and Great Purge , but
25344-591: The Cold War. In 1988, the USSR abandoned its war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the following year, Gorbachev refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet satellite states , which paved the way for the Revolutions of 1989 . In particular, the standstill of the Soviet Union at the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 then set a peaceful chain reaction in motion, at
25600-510: The Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Chinese Communist Party , and its influence grew elsewhere in the world. Fearing its ambitions, the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, became its enemies. In the ensuing Cold War, the two sides clashed indirectly in proxy wars . Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Without a mutually agreeable successor, the highest Communist Party officials initially opted to rule
25856-472: The Communist authorities. Under Joseph Stalin , the death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935. Sergei Kovalev recalled "the famous article 125 of the Constitution which enumerated all basic civil and political rights" in the Soviet Union. But when he and other prisoners attempted to use this as a legal basis for their abuse complaints, their prosecutor's argument
26112-526: The Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes: "The net outflow of resources from eastern Europe to the Soviet Union was approximately $ 15 billion to $ 20 billion in the first decade after World War II, an amount roughly equal to the total aid provided by the United States to western Europe under the Marshall Plan ." Later,
26368-528: The Communists sought to distance themselves from to Social Democracy 's association with reformism. The Communists also sought to distinguish themselves from the socialists that had supported the imperialist Great War and thus betrayed proletarian internationalism . This reformist–revolutionary division culminated in the German Revolution of 1919 , in which the Communists wanted to overthrow
26624-608: The Council of Ministers. Anastas Mikoyan , and later Nikolai Podgorny , became Chairmen of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Alongside Andrei Kirilenko as organisational secretary, and Mikhail Suslov as chief ideologue, this group formed a reinvigorated collective leadership , which contrasted in form with the autocracy that characterized Khrushchev's rule. The collective leadership initially focused on stabilizing
26880-508: The Eastern Bloc, further strained the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev 's policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) aimed to revitalize the Soviet system but instead accelerated its unraveling. Nationalist movements gained momentum across the Soviet republics , and the control of the Communist Party weakened. The failed coup attempt in August 1991 against Gorbachev by hardline communists hastened
27136-679: The Eastern Front. Harry Hopkins , a close foreign policy advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke on 10 August 1943 of the USSR's decisive role in the war, saying that "While in Sicily the forces of Great Britain and the United States are being opposed by 2 German divisions, the Russian front is receiving attention of approximately 200 German divisions." Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities . The USSR suffered greatly in
27392-555: The Gaitskellites, nationalization was not essential to achieve all major socialist objectives; public ownership and nationalization were not explicitly rejected but were seen as merely one of numerous useful devices. According to social democratic modernizers like Blair, nationalization policies had become politically unviable by the 1990s. During the Third Way development of social democracy, social democrats adjusted to
27648-728: The German government and establish a soviet republic like Russia, while the Social Democrats wanted to preserve it as what came to be known as the Weimar Republic . Thus social democracy went from a "Marxist revolutionary" doctrine into a form of "moderate parliamentary socialism". The Bolsheviks split from the Second International and created their own separate Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 that sought to rally revolutionary social democrats together for socialist revolution. With this split,
27904-533: The German invasion of 1941. For this reason, the USSR sought to cement its control of the region by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and subservient to its leadership. As a result, Soviet military forces were used to suppress an anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956. In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the Soviet rapprochement with
28160-618: The Marxist analysis that the creation of socialism is interconnected with the evolution of capitalism. August Bebel , Bernstein, Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht , Marx, and Carl Wilhelm Tölcke are all considered founders of social democracy in Germany. However, Bernstein and Lassalle, along with labourists and reformists such as Louis Blanc in France, led to the widespread association of social democracy with socialist reformism. While Lassalle
28416-538: The Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a decision by both the Politburo and the Central Committee. All leaders of the Communist Party before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party. Between 1988 and 1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from
28672-459: The Provisional Government leaders and Lenin declared that all power was now transferred to the Soviets. This event would later be officially known in Soviet bibliographies as the " Great October Socialist Revolution ". Bolshevik figures such as Anatoly Lunacharsky , Moisei Uritsky , and Dmitry Manuilsky agreed that Lenin's influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection
28928-583: The Reds were defeated, while the Red Army managed to occupy Armenia , Azerbaijan , and Georgia in the Caucasus . Additionally, the forced requisition of food by the Soviet government led to substantial resistance, of which the most notable was the Tambov Rebellion , ultimately put down by the Red Army. The civil war had a devastating impact on the economy. A black market emerged in Russia, despite
29184-475: The Russian name of the Soviet Union as СС has been taboo, the reason being that СС as a Russian Cyrillic abbreviation is associated with the infamous Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany , as SS is in English. In English-language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. The Russian SFSR dominated the Soviet Union to such an extent that, for most of the Soviet Union's existence, it
29440-632: The Soviet Union and turned into SSRs, which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation . After the Soviet invasion of Finland , the Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed on annexed territory as a Union Republic in March 1940 and then incorporated into Russia as the Karelian ASSR in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below). While nominally
29696-529: The Soviet Union . Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the RSFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation , which became the Soviet Union's successor state; all other republics emerged as fully independent post-Soviet states . During its existence, the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations . It had the world's second-largest economy and largest standing military. An NPT-designated state , it wielded
29952-426: The Soviet Union and calming Soviet society . They also sought to accelerate economic growth, which had slowed considerably during Khrushchev's final years in power. In 1965, Kosygin initiated several economic reforms aimed at decentralizing the Soviet economy. These reforms initially spurred economic growth, but hard-liners within the Party halted them, fearing that they would undermine the Party's prestige and power. As
30208-479: The Soviet Union jointly through a troika headed by Georgy Malenkov . This did not last, however, and Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the ensuing power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956, he denounced Joseph Stalin and proceeded to ease controls over the party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization . Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a critically vital buffer zone for the forward defence of its western borders, in case of another major invasion such as
30464-413: The Soviet Union made a dramatic shift towards Nazi Germany. Almost a year after Britain and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union made agreements with Germany as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks . Unlike the case of Britain and France, the Soviet Union's agreement with Germany, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (signed on 23 August 1939), included
30720-542: The Soviet Union's priorities changed. Despite previous conflict with the United Kingdom , Vyacheslav Molotov dropped his post war border demands. The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , which began following World War II in 1945. The term cold war is used because there
30976-480: The Soviet Union's superpower status, the economy struggled due to its centralized nature, technological backwardness, and inefficiencies. The vast military expenditures and burdens of maintaining the Eastern Bloc, further strained the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev 's policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) aimed to revitalize the Soviet system but instead accelerated its unraveling. Nationalist movements gained momentum across
31232-483: The Soviet authorities admitted. The Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions. In 1988, total emissions in the Soviet Union were about 79% of those in the United States. But since the Soviet GNP was only 54% of that of the United States, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the United States per unit of GNP. The Soviet Chernobyl disaster in 1986
31488-487: The Soviet occupation zone was then handed over to Germany. On 10 October, the Soviet Union and Lithuania signed an agreement whereby the Soviet Union transferred Polish sovereignty over the Vilna region to Lithuania, and on 28 October the boundary between the Soviet occupation zone and the new territory of Lithuania was officially demarcated. On 1 November, the Soviet Union annexed Western Ukraine , followed by Western Belarus on
31744-664: The Soviets ended their involvement in the war and signed a separate peace treaty, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . After the defeat of the Germans in the war, Lenin sought the creation of formally independent Soviet republics in the territories that were being vacated by the German Army. A long and bloody civil war ensued between the Reds and the Whites , ending in 1921–1922 with the Reds' victory. It included foreign intervention ,
32000-695: The Soviets, and gained support from the workers and soldiers. After the October Revolution , in which the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets, Lenin proclaimed the formation of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR). During the Georgian Affair of 1922, Lenin called for the Russian SFSR and other national Soviet republics to form
32256-415: The Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin (1941–1953) and Khrushchev (1958–1964) were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the mostly ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet ,
32512-401: The Third Way. This has caused much controversy within the social democratic movement. From the late 19th century until the mid to late 20th century, there was greater public confidence in the idea of a state-managed economy that was a major pillar of communism, and to a substantial degree by conservatives and left-liberals . Aside from anarchists and other libertarian socialists , there
32768-551: The US led to the Cold War . The American-led Western Bloc coalesced into NATO in 1949, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955. Neither side engaged in direct military confrontation, and instead fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars . In 1953, following Stalin's death , the Soviet Union undertook a campaign of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev , which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China . During
33024-439: The USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with Japan, which the Soviets would unilaterally break in 1945, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo , a Japanese puppet state . The pact ensured Japan would not enter the World War II against the USSR on the side of Germany later. On 1 September, Germany invaded Poland and on the 17th the Soviet Union invaded Poland as well. On 6 October, Poland fell and part of
33280-466: The USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line. During the immediate post-war period, the Soviet Union rebuilt and expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control . It took effective control over most of the countries of Eastern Europe (except Yugoslavia and later Albania ), turning them into satellite states . The USSR bound its satellite states in
33536-430: The USSR. Moscow eventually stopped threatening other states, and instead worked to open peaceful relationships in terms of trade, and diplomatic recognition. The United Kingdom dismissed the warnings of Winston Churchill and a few others about a continuing Marxist-Leninist threat, and opened trade relations and de facto diplomatic recognition in 1922. There was hope for a settlement of the pre-war Tsarist debts, but it
33792-427: The Union. However, by December all except Russia and Kazakhstan had formally declared independence. During this time, Yeltsin took over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Moscow Kremlin . The final blow was struck on 1 December when Ukraine, the second-most powerful republic, voted overwhelmingly for independence . Ukraine's secession ended any realistic chance of the country staying together even on
34048-504: The United Kingdom (the latter in the form of the Liberal welfare reforms ), with both socialist and liberal parties adopting those policies. In the United States, the progressive movement , a similar social democratic movement predominantly influenced more by social liberalism than socialism , supported progressive liberals such as Democratic presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt , whose New Freedom and New Deal programmes adopted many social democratic policies. With
34304-409: The United States as representing European social democracy. South Africa has been governed by the African National Congress (ANC), a social democratic party, since 1994. In 2022, The World Economic Forum said that South Africa risks state collapse and identified five major risks facing the country. Former minister Jay Naidoo has said that South Africa is in serious trouble and is showing signs of
34560-441: The United States has been linked to the Red Scare , and any ideology associated with socialism brings social stigma due to its association with authoritarian socialist states . Socialism has been used as a pejorative term by members of the political right to stop the implementation of liberal and progressive policies and proposals and to criticize the public figures trying to implement them. Although Americans may reject
34816-465: The United States, where it is tied to the New Deal . Some democratic socialists who follow social democracy support practical, progressive reforms of capitalism and are more concerned with administrating and humanising it, with socialism relegated to the indefinite future. Other democratic socialists want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate the systematic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism . Despite
35072-444: The United States: launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov , the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2 . Khrushchev initiated ' The Thaw ',
35328-409: The Warsaw Pact overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes , and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to preserve the country as a renewed federation , an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the largest republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of
35584-422: The West, and what Mao Zedong perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism , led to the Sino–Soviet split . This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement, with the governments in Albania , Cambodia , and Somalia choosing to ally with China. During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the USSR continued to realize scientific and technological exploits in the Space Race , rivaling
35840-449: The accident, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). Another major radioactive accident was the Kyshtym disaster . The Kola Peninsula was one of the places with major problems. Around the industrial cities of Monchegorsk and Norilsk , where nickel , for example, is mined, all forests have been destroyed by contamination, while the northern and other parts of Russia have been affected by emissions. During
36096-471: The brunt of the war, Roosevelt's advisor Harry Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion. Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to
36352-410: The capitalist system, which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist system. According to this view, social democracy fails to address the systemic issues inherent in capitalism. The American democratic socialist philosopher David Schweickart contrasts social democracy with democratic socialism by defining the former as an attempt to strengthen the welfare state and
36608-440: The collapse of the Soviet Union, which formally dissolved on December 26, 1991, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule. The legacy of the Soviet Union is complex, leaving behind significant industrial achievements, military prowess, cultural influence, and an impact on global politics, but also a record of repression, economic inefficiencies, and the suppression of political and personal freedoms. Modern revolutionary activity in
36864-504: The country developed a robust industrial economy in the years preceding World War II . Closer cooperation between the USSR and the West developed in the early 1930s. From 1932 to 1934, the country participated in the World Disarmament Conference . In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established when in November, the newly elected President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to recognize Stalin's Communist government formally and negotiated
37120-429: The country was limited. The state restricted rights of citizens to private property . According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , human rights are the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." including the right to life and liberty , freedom of expression , and equality before the law ; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture ,
37376-442: The creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers relating to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the government budget . The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium (successor of the Central Executive Committee ) to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court , the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as
37632-409: The degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They were not controlled by
37888-403: The delegations, Mikhail Kalinin , Mikhail Tskhakaya , Mikhail Frunze , Grigory Petrovsky , and Alexander Chervyakov , on 30 December 1922. The formal proclamation was made from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry, and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to
38144-432: The duty of the Russian Bolsheviks to protect what they had in Russia, and avoid military confrontations that might destroy their bridgehead. Russia was now a pariah state, along with Germany. The two came to terms in 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo that settled long-standing grievances. At the same time, the two countries secretly set up training programs for the illegal German army and air force operations at hidden camps in
38400-520: The early 21st centuries. As the number of people in traditional working-class occupations such as factory workers and miners declined, socialists have successfully widened their appeal to the middle class by diluting their ideology; however, there is still continuity between parties such as the SPD, the Labour Party in Britain, and other socialist parties which remain part of the same famille spirituelle , or ideological party family, as outlined by most political scientists. For many social democrats, Marxism
38656-446: The economy in the public interest . Social democracy has a strong, long-standing connection with trade unions and the broader labour movement . It is supportive of measures to foster greater democratic decision-making in the economic sphere , including co-determination , collective bargaining rights for workers, and expanding ownership to employees and other stakeholders . The history of social democracy stretches back to
38912-548: The economy and retaining significant social regulations. When nationalization of large industries was relatively widespread in the 20th century until the 1970s, it was not uncommon for commentators to describe some European social democracies as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries toward a socialist economy . In 1956, leading Labour Party politician and British author Anthony Crosland said that capitalism had been abolished in Britain, although others such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan , Minister of Health in
39168-438: The economy that the state could best manage and rejected a mass scale of state ownership as being too burdensome to be manageable. Bernstein was an advocate of Kantian socialism and neo-Kantianism . Although unpopular early on, his views became mainstream after World War I. In The Future of Socialism (1956), Anthony Crosland argued that "traditional capitalism has been reformed and modified almost out of existence, and it
39424-451: The economy, some political commentators stated that during the post-war period, when social democratic parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states. The same claim has been applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model. In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigism and attempted to nationalize all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from
39680-413: The efficiency of the capitalist system by reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in further production. The welfare state only serves to legitimize and prolong the exploitative and contradiction-laden system of capitalism to society's detriment. Critics of contemporary social democracy, such as Jonas Hinnfors, argue that when social democracy abandoned Marxism , it also abandoned socialism and became
39936-425: The either/or interpretation of capitalism versus socialism. It claims that fostering a progressive evolution of capitalism will gradually result in the evolution of a capitalist economy into a socialist economy. All citizens should be legally entitled to certain social rights: universal access to public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services, including child care and care for
40192-889: The elderly. Social democrats advocate freedom from discrimination based on differences in ability/disability, age, ethnicity , gender , language, race, religion, sexual orientation , and social class . Later in their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that in some countries, workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means. In this sense, Engels argued that socialists were evolutionists, although both Marx and Engels remained committed to social revolution . In developing social democracy, Eduard Bernstein rejected orthodox Marxism 's revolutionary and materialist foundations. Rather than class conflict and socialist revolution , Bernstein's Marxist revisionism reflected that socialism could be achieved through cooperation between people regardless of class. Nonetheless, Bernstein paid deference to Marx, describing him as
40448-477: The emergence of developments within the European left, such as Eurocommunism , the rise of neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Revolutions of 1989 , the Third Way , and the rise of anti-austerity and Occupy movements due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession , the causes of which have been attributed by some to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies. This latest development contributed to
40704-435: The end of which the Eastern Bloc collapsed. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing re-unification, the Iron Curtain between the West and Soviet-occupied regions came down. At the same time, the Soviet republics started legal moves towards potentially declaring sovereignty over their territories, citing the freedom to secede in Article 72 of the USSR constitution. On 7 April 1990,
40960-451: The father of social democracy but declaring that it was necessary to revise Marx's thought in light of changing conditions. Influenced by the gradualist platform favoured by the Fabian movement in Britain, Bernstein advocated a similar evolutionary approach to socialist politics that he termed evolutionary socialism . Evolutionary means include representative democracy and cooperation between people regardless of class. Bernstein accepted
41216-412: The field of computerization, further hindered its competitiveness with Western powers. Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower
41472-445: The first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service , disputed the claim. For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state. According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service , which opposed the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society. Although, as in the rest of Europe, the laws of capitalism still operated fully and private enterprise dominated
41728-417: The founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were formed from parts of Russia's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan PSPs . In 1929, Tajikistan was split off from the Uzbekistan SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR
41984-425: The general interest, state provision of welfare services and state redistribution of income and wealth. Social democratic concepts influence the policies of most Western states since World War 2. Social democracy is frequently considered a practical middle course between capitalism and socialism. Social democracy aims to use democratic collective action for promoting freedom and equality in the economy and opposes what
42240-410: The general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism , demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above. The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state mainly through its control over the system of appointments . All senior government officials and most deputies of
42496-413: The globe. The post-Stalin leadership, particularly under Nikita Khrushchev , initiated a de-Stalinization process, leading to a period of liberalization and relative openness known as the Khrushchev Thaw . However, the subsequent era under Leonid Brezhnev , referred to as the Era of Stagnation , was marked by economic decline, political corruption, and a rigid gerontocracy . Despite efforts to maintain
42752-409: The goal of developing democratic socialism. Others are also part of the Progressive Alliance , founded in 2013 by most contemporary or former member parties of the Socialist International. Social democracy has been seen as a revision of orthodox Marxism , although this has been described as misleading for modern social democracy. Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein 's views influenced and laid
43008-399: The government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Russian president Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared
43264-436: The government at the national level. During the post-war consensus , this form of social democracy has been a major component of the Nordic model and, to a lesser degree, the West European social market economies . The development of social corporatism began in Norway and Sweden in the 1930s and was consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s. The system was based upon the dual compromise of capital and labour as one component and
43520-438: The government. Extensive extrajudicial powers were given to the Soviet secret police agencies . In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed the rule of law , civil liberties , protection of law and guarantees of property , which were considered as examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet law theorists such as Andrey Vyshinsky . The USSR and other countries in the Soviet Bloc had abstained from affirming
43776-399: The gradual abolition of capitalism and social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism. Although social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction between democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means. The latter proposes representative democracy under the rule of law as
44032-401: The groundwork for developing post-war social democracy as a policy regime, Labour revisionism , and the neo-revisionism of the Third Way . This definition of social democracy is focused on ethical terms, with the type of socialism advocated being ethical and liberal . Bernstein described socialism and social democracy in particular as organized liberalism; in this sense, liberalism is
44288-413: The height of the savage violence in 1937. The civil rights, personal freedoms, and democratic forms promised in the Stalin constitution were trampled almost immediately and remained dead letters until long after Stalin's death." Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the detainment or execution of many ' Old Bolsheviks ' who had participated in the October Revolution. According to declassified Soviet archives,
44544-402: The highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989, the first in Soviet history. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, and much stronger than before. For the first time since
44800-611: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. The Soviet Union was greatly assisted in its wartime effort by the United States via Lend-Lease . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 11,400 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 3,414 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,397 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. As Soviet soldiers were bearing
45056-421: The idea that the United States has characteristics of a European-style social democracy, it has been argued by some observers that it has a comfortable social safety net , albeit severely underfunded in comparison to other Western countries. It has also been argued that many policies that may be considered socialist are popular but that socialism is not. Others, such as Tony Judt , described modern liberalism in
45312-412: The implementation of market-oriented , monetarist , and neoliberal policies ( privatization , deregulation , free trade , economic globalization , and anti- inflationary fiscal policy , among others), the social democratic welfare state was put in doubt. This caused several social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way , a centrist ideology combining social democracy with neoliberalism; however,
45568-402: The implementation of socialist policies and the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed for market-oriented reforms. The rise of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s ushered in an era of intense centralization and totalitarianism. Stalin's rule was characterized by the forced collectivization of agriculture , rapid industrialization , and the Great Purge , which eliminated perceived enemies of
45824-452: The importance of social corporatism to social democracy in his work Economic Democracy: The Politics of a Feasible Socialism (1995). As a welfare state, social democracy is a specific type of welfare state and policy regime described as being universalist, supportive of collective bargaining, and more supportive of public provision of welfare. It is especially associated with the Nordic model. Social democratic policies were first adopted in
46080-420: The individuals, groups, and literature of the First International , and have retained some of the terminology and symbolism such as the colour red . How far society should intervene and whether the government, mainly the existing government, is the right vehicle for change are issues of disagreement. As the Historical Dictionary of Socialism summarizes, "there were general criticisms about the social effects of
46336-604: The influence of both the reformist socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle and the internationalist revolutionary socialism advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Social democracy has undergone various major forms throughout its history. In the 19th century, it encompassed various non-revolutionary and revolutionary currents of socialism, excluding anarchism . In one of the first scholarly works on European socialism written for an American audience, Richard T. Ely 's 1883 book French and German Socialism in Modern Times , social democrats were characterized as "the extreme wing of
46592-454: The influence of politicians like Carlo Rosselli in Italy, social democrats began disassociating themselves from orthodox Marxism altogether as represented by Marxism–Leninism , embracing liberal socialism , Keynesianism , and appealing to morality rather than any consistent systematic, scientific , or materialist worldview. Social democracy appealed to communitarian , corporatist , and sometimes nationalist sentiments while rejecting
46848-445: The institutions of liberal democracy . Starting in the post-war period, social democracy was defined as a policy regime advocating the reformation of capitalism to align it with the ethical ideals of social justice . What socialists such as anarchists , communists , social democrats, syndicalists , and some social democratic proponents of the Third Way share in common is history, specifically that they can all be traced back to
47104-571: The interests of the people through their representatives' influence, an argument echoed by some socialists in post-war Britain. Advents in economics and observation of the failure of state socialism in the Eastern Bloc countries and the Western world with the crisis and stagflation of the 1970s, combined with the neoliberal rebuke of state interventionism , resulted in socialists re-evaluating and redesigning socialism. Some social democrats have sought to keep what they deem are socialism's core values while changing their position on state involvement in
47360-412: The invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away. The USSR concentrated on its own recovery, seizing and transferring most of Germany's industrial plants, and it exacted war reparations from East Germany , Hungary , Romania , and Bulgaria using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It also instituted trading arrangements deliberately designed to favour the country. Moscow controlled
47616-533: The latter as an alternative economic system to capitalism. According to Schweickart, the democratic socialist critique of social democracy is that capitalism can never be sufficiently humanized and that any attempt to suppress its economic contradictions will only cause them to emerge elsewhere. He gives the example that attempts to reduce unemployment too much would result in inflation, and too much job security would erode labour discipline. In contrast to social democracy's mixed economy , democratic socialists advocate
47872-413: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in
48128-424: The long history of overlap between the two, with social democracy considered a form of democratic or parliamentary socialism and social democrats calling themselves democratic socialists, democratic socialism is considered a misnomer in the United States. One issue is that social democracy is equated with wealthy countries in the Western world, especially in Northern and Western Europe, while democratic socialism
48384-430: The majority of the population in those republics voting for preservation of the Union in the form of a new federation. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty , which would have turned the country into a much looser Union, was agreed upon by eight republics. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup —an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of
48640-551: The market and the state as the other. From the 1940s through the 1970s, defining features of social democracy as a policy regime included Keynesian economic policies and industrial agreements to balance the power of capital and labour and the welfare state. This is especially associated with the Swedish Social Democrats . In the 1970s, social corporatism evolved into neo-corporatism , which replaced it. Neo-corporatism has represented an important concept of Third Way social democracy . Social democratic theorist Robin Archer wrote about
48896-416: The most common Russian initialization is Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR ) which essentially translates to Union of SSRs in English. In addition, the Russian short form name Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovyetsky Soyuz , which literally means Soviet Union ) is also commonly used, but only in its unabbreviated form. Since the start of the Great Patriotic War at the latest, abbreviating
49152-457: The most democratic constitution imaginable, though there was some skepticism. American historian J. Arch Getty concludes: "Many who lauded Stalin's Soviet Union as the most democratic country on earth lived to regret their words. After all, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was adopted on the eve of the Great Terror of the late 1930s; the "thoroughly democratic" elections to the first Supreme Soviet permitted only uncontested candidates and took place at
49408-433: The neoliberal political climate that had existed since the 1980s. Those social democrats recognized that outspoken opposition to capitalism was politically non-viable and that accepting the powers that be , seeking to challenge free-market and laissez-faire variations of capitalism, was a more immediate concern. The Third Way stands for a modernized social democracy, but the social democracy that remained committed to
49664-417: The newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR , and communist hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged a coup attempt . The coup failed, and the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power 'in the period of transition'. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR. The judiciary
49920-400: The nominal head of state . The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations . However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party, nor
50176-552: The official Soviet system of importance (ground forces were second, Air Force fourth, and Navy fifth). The army had the greatest political influence. In 1989, there served two million soldiers divided between 150 motorized and 52 armored divisions. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet navy was a rather small military branch, but after the Caribbean crisis , under the leadership of Sergei Gorshkov , it expanded significantly. It became known for battlecruisers and submarines. In 1989, there served 500 000 men. The Soviet Air Force focused on
50432-726: The only acceptable constitutional form of government. During the Great Recession, Social Democratic parties in Europe increasingly adopted austerity as a policy response to the economic crisis, shifting away from the traditional Keynesian response of deficit spending . According to Björn Bremer, this shift in thinking was due to the influence of supply-side economics on Social Democratic leaders and by electoral motivations whereby Social Democrats wanted to appear economically competent to voters by adopting orthodox fiscal policies. Social democracy has some significant overlap in practical policy positions with democratic socialism, although they are usually distinguished from each other. In Britain,
50688-420: The only legal party and the final policymaker in the country. At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee , elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. In turn, the Central Committee voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952 and 1966), Secretariat and the general secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the de facto highest office in the Soviet Union. Depending on
50944-520: The other order until 1936 . In addition, in the regional languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukrainian SSR . СССР (in the Latin alphabet: SSSR ) is the abbreviation of the Russian-language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters . The Soviets used this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. After this,
51200-494: The partition of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II . Up until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin controlled all foreign relations of the Soviet Union during the interwar period . Despite the increasing build-up of Germany 's war machine and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Soviet Union did not cooperate with any other nation, choosing to follow its own path. However, after Operation Barbarossa ,
51456-429: The party's highest body the Politburo . Operations were handled by the separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs . It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (or Narkomindel), until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in
51712-440: The position that socialism should be grounded in ethical and moral arguments and achieved through gradual legislative reform . Bernstein's ideas were initially not well received; his party maintained the position that reforms should be pursued only as a means to an eventual revolution, not as a substitute for it. Yet, Bernstein's ideas would have growing influence, particularly after the First World War. The Russian Revolution
51968-423: The post-war period. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the USSR had official relations with practically every country by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the country became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council , which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions. The USSR, in fulfillment of its agreement with
52224-447: The predecessor and precursor of socialism, whose restricted view of freedom is to be socialized , while democracy must entail social democracy. For those social democrats, who still describe and see themselves as socialists, socialism is used in ethical or moral terms, representing democracy, egalitarianism, and social justice rather than a specifically socialist economic system. Under this type of definition, social democracy's goal
52480-400: The prediction that the working class was the decisive class with the development of capitalism. In their view, this did not materialize in the aftermath of mass industrialization during World War II. In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty , social welfare , and social equality . The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between
52736-417: The price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, and resulted in the depletion of the country's hard currency reserves. Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid
52992-486: The primary reason for this was the perspective that viewed the Stalinist-era Soviet Union as having succeeded in usurping the legacy of Marxism and distorting it in propaganda to justify totalitarianism . In its foundation, the Socialist International denounced the Bolshevik-inspired communist movement, "for [it] falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition". Furthermore, core tenets of Marxism have been regarded by social democrats as having become obsolete, including
53248-435: The private ownership and control of capital", "a general view that the solution to these problems lay in some form of collective control (with the degree of control varying among the proponents of socialism) over the means of production, distribution, and exchange", and "there was agreement that the outcomes of this collective control should be a society that provided social equality and justice, economic protection, and generally
53504-525: The prospect of a new socialism was "a chimera, a hopeful invention of Western socialists who had not understood how ' actually existing socialism ' had totally discredited any version of socialism among those who had lived under it". Social democracy influenced the development of social corporatism , a form of economic tripartite corporatism based upon a social partnership between the interests of capital and labour , involving collective bargaining between representatives of employers and labour mediated by
53760-422: The reformists founded the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923. The LSI had a history of rivalry with the Comintern, with which it competed over the leadership of the international socialist and labour movement. During the 1920s and 1930s, social democracy became dominant in the socialist movement, mainly associated with reformist socialism while communism represented revolutionary socialism. Under
54016-488: The region's political scene and laid the ground for their universal welfare states in the 20th century. The Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands, also ranks highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita , economic equality , public health , life expectancy , solidarity , perceived freedom to make life choices , generosity , quality of life , and human development , while countries practising
54272-503: The restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example). Gorbachev resigned as general secretary in late August, and soon afterwards, the party's activities were indefinitely suspended—effectively ending its rule. By the fall, Gorbachev could no longer influence events outside Moscow, and he was being challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had been elected President of Russia in July 1991. The remaining 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of
54528-430: The return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. The debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a ' troika ' consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR , Lev Kamenev , of
54784-399: The revised version of Clause IV to the Labour Party Constitution , which was implemented in the 1990s by the New Labour faction led by Tony Blair , affirms a formal commitment to democratic socialism, describing it as a modernized form of social democracy; however, it no longer commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and
55040-412: The rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services either owned by the public or accountable to them". Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists", and some such as Blair "use or have used these terms interchangeably". Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using
55296-551: The rise of politicians, such as Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who rejected centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties. According to both right-wing critics and supporters alike, policies such as universal health care and education are "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society". Because of this overlap, democratic socialism refers to European socialism as represented by social democracy, especially in
55552-442: The rising legitimacy of neoliberalism, especially laissez-faire capitalism. The Third Way's view of the crisis is criticized for being too simplistic. Others have criticized it because with the fall of state socialism, it was possible for "a new kind of 'third way' socialism (combining social ownership with markets and democracy), thereby heralding a revitalization of the social democratic tradition"; however, it has been argued that
55808-399: The secession by crushing popular demonstrations in Lithuania ( Bloody Sunday ) and Latvia ( The Barricades ), as a result of which numerous civilians were killed or wounded. However, these actions only bolstered international support for the secessionists. A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991 in nine republics (the remainder having boycotted the vote), with
56064-411: The socialism associated with Karl Marx had become the official theoretical basis of the first social democratic party established in Europe, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany . In the early 20th century, the German social democratic politician Eduard Bernstein rejected orthodox Marxist ideas about the inevitable progression of history and the need for revolution , advancing instead
56320-426: The socialists" who were "inclined to lay so much stress on equality of enjoyment, regardless of the value of one's labor, that they might, perhaps, more properly be called communists". In the early 20th century, social democracy came to refer to support for a process of developing society through existing political structures and opposition to revolutionary means, which are often associated with Marxism. Thus whereas in
56576-456: The socioeconomic order in Europe from the post-war period until the early 1990s. Social democratic roots are also observed in Latin America during the early 20th century; this was the case in Uruguay during the two presidential terms of José Batlle y Ordóñez . While the welfare state has been accepted across the political spectrum, particularly by conservatives ( Christian democrats ) and liberals ( social liberals ), one notable difference
56832-427: The state. The Soviet Union played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War II , but at a tremendous human cost, with millions of Soviet citizens perishing in the conflict. The Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, leading the Eastern Bloc in opposition to the Western Bloc during the Cold War . This period saw the USSR engage in an arms race, the Space Race , and proxy wars around
57088-469: The struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns, espionage , far-reaching embargoes , rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race . Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Byelorussia (SSRs), or federations, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (SFSRs), all four being
57344-478: The term 'social democracy' only". Democratic socialism represents social democracy before the 1970s, when the post-war displacement of Keynesianism by monetarism and neoliberalism caused many social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the status quo for the time being and redefining socialism in a way that maintains the capitalist structure intact. Like modern social democracy, democratic socialism tends to follow
57600-491: The term. It was a set of social programs implemented in Germany that Bismarck initiated in 1883 as remedial measures to appease the working class and reduce support for socialism and the Social Democrats following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws. This did not prevent the Social Democrats from becoming the biggest party in parliament by 1912. Similar policies were later adopted in most of Western Europe, including France and
57856-415: The threat of martial law against profiteering. The ruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to
58112-413: The three years of German occupation , almost a quarter of the region's population, including around 550,000 Jews in the Holocaust in Belarus . During the war, the country together with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four Allied powers, and later became the Four Policemen that formed the basis of the United Nations Security Council . It emerged as a superpower in
58368-492: The truth". Human rights in the Soviet Union were severely limited. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state from 1927 until 1953 and a one-party state until 1990. Freedom of speech was suppressed and dissent was punished. Independent political activities were not tolerated, whether these involved participation in free labour unions , private corporations , independent churches or opposition political parties . The freedom of movement within and especially outside
58624-411: The war, losing around 20 million people (modern Russian sources put the number at 26.6 million). This includes 8.7 million military deaths. The majority of the losses were ethnic Russians , followed by ethnic Ukrainians . Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42. More than 2 million people were killed in Belarus during
58880-434: The war, such as Japan ( Japanese post-war economic miracle ), West Germany and Austria ( Wirtschaftswunder ), South Korea ( Miracle of the Han River ), France ( Trente Glorieuses ), Italy ( Italian economic miracle ), and Greece ( Greek economic miracle ). With the 1970s energy crisis , the abandonment of both the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system along with Keynesian social democratic, mixed-economy policies and
59136-403: The west further raised concerns. In the past, there were accidents involving submarines K-19 , K-8 , a K-129 , K-27 , K-219 and K-278 Komsomolets . There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the government represented by the Council of Ministers , and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),
59392-406: The world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran ), and Lake Baikal , the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake that is also an internal body of water in Russia. Neighbouring countries were aware of the high levels of pollution in the Soviet Union but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was discovered that its environmental problems were greater than what
59648-452: Was a coastline . The country bordered Afghanistan , the People's Republic of China , Czechoslovakia , Finland , Hungary , Iran , Mongolia , North Korea , Norway , Poland , Romania , and Turkey from 1945 to 1991. The Bering Strait separated the USSR from the United States . The country's highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismoil Somoni Peak ) in Tajikistan , at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The USSR also included most of
59904-430: Was a pivotal moment that furthered the division between reformists and revolutionary socialists. Those supporting the October Revolution renamed themselves as Communists while those opposing the Bolsheviks retained the Social Democrat label. While both groups technically shared the goal of a communist society that fully realized the principle of " from each according to his ability, to each according to his need ",
60160-497: Was a reformist state socialist , Bernstein predicted a long-term coexistence of democracy with a mixed economy during the reforming of capitalism into socialism and argued that socialists needed to accept this. This mixed economy would involve public , cooperative , and private enterprises , and it would be necessary for an extended period before private enterprises evolve of their own accord into cooperative enterprises. Bernstein supported state ownership only for certain parts of
60416-427: Was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities. A spontaneous popular demonstration in Petrograd on 8 March 1917, demanding peace and bread, culminated in the February Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II and the imperial government. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the social-democratic Russian Provisional Government , which intended to conduct elections to
60672-463: Was alienating potential middle-class Labour supporters, and nationalization policies had been so thoroughly attacked by neoliberal economists and politicians, including rhetorical comparisons by the right of state-owned industry in the West to that in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and nationalizations and state socialism became unpopular. Thatcherite Conservatives were adept at condemning state-owned enterprises as economically inefficient. For
60928-408: Was also the industrial center of the Soviet Union. Historian Matthew White wrote that it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was 'window dressing' for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were usually called 'Russians', not 'Soviets', since 'everyone knew who really ran the show'. Under the Military Law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of
61184-434: Was brought under strict party control after Stalin's death. Under Yuri Andropov , the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high-ranking party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The constitution , which
61440-488: Was carried out according to Trotsky's , not to Lenin's plan. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . Lenin's government instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education , universal healthcare , and equal rights for women . Conversely, the bloody Red Terror was initiated to shut down all opposition, both perceived and real. The terror also arose in response to
61696-419: Was carried out within the terms of the Soviet Civil Code. Some Soviet legal scholars even said that "criminal repression" may be applied in the absence of guilt. Martin Latsis , chief of Soviet Ukraine 's secret police explained: "Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what
61952-404: Was colloquially, but incorrectly, referred to as Russia . The history of the Soviet Union began with the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War , the Soviet Union quickly became a one-party state under the Communist Party . Its early years under Lenin were marked by
62208-423: Was confidence amongst socialists in the concept of state socialism as being the most effective form of socialism. Some early British social democrats in the 19th century and 20th century, such as the Fabians , said that British society was already mostly socialist and that the economy was significantly socialist through government-run enterprises created by conservative and liberal governments which could be run for
62464-404: Was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia , Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from the Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status. In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Soviet-occupied Bessarabia , and Ukrainian SSR. Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania were also annexed by
62720-408: Was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the Soviet laws. After a landslide victory of Sąjūdis in Lithuania, that country declared its independence restored on 11 March 1990, citing the illegality of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . Soviet forces attempted to halt
62976-486: Was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate , which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmaneuvering his rivals within the party , Stalin became the undisputed leader of the country and, by the end of the 1920s, established a totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from
63232-424: Was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers , but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment,
63488-450: Was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts ( People's Court ) and applied the law as established by the constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union used the inquisitorial system of Roman law , where the judge, procurator , and defence attorney collaborate to "establish
63744-425: Was not mentioned in it until 1977. The USSR was a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities. However, the term 'Soviet Russia' – formally applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republic – was often applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers due to its domination by the Russian SFSR. On 3 April 1922, Stalin
64000-433: Was promulgated in 1924 , 1936 and 1977 , did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in
64256-477: Was repeatedly postponed. Formal recognition came when the new Labour Party came to power in 1924. All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. Henry Ford opened large-scale business relations with the Soviets in the late 1920s, hoping that it would lead to long-term peace. Finally, in 1933, the United States officially recognized the USSR, a decision backed by the public opinion and especially by US business interests that expected an opening of
64512-482: Was that "the Constitution was written not for you, but for American Negroes, so that they know how happy the lives of Soviet citizens are". Crime was determined not as the infraction of law, instead, it was determined as any action which could threaten the Soviet state and society. For example, a desire to make a profit could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary activity punishable by death. The liquidation and deportation of millions of peasants in 1928–31
64768-506: Was the Russian responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon of choice. A few revolutions did break out, but they were quickly suppressed (the longest lasting one was in Hungary)—the Hungarian Soviet Republic —lasted only from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919. The Russian Bolsheviks were in no position to give any help. By 1921, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin realized that capitalism had stabilized itself in Europe and there would not be any widespread revolutions anytime soon. It became
65024-404: Was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power plant . Unparalleled in the world, it resulted in a large number of radioactive isotopes being released into the atmosphere. Radioactive doses were scattered relatively far. Although long-term effects of the accident were unknown, 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer which resulted from the accident's contamination were reported at the time of
65280-431: Was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned . The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets ) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, its powers and functions were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including
65536-406: Was used to offset multiple economic weaknesses. Former Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin once remarked that "things are bad with bread. Give me 3 million tons [of oil] over the plan." The revenue from oil exports helped to mitigate a growing food supply crisis, fund the import of equipment and consumer goods, and sustain the arms race with the US. It also underpinned risky foreign policy actions, such as
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