Russia

The signing of the peace treaty caused a split within the country. Civil War resulted. White (non-Bolshevik) armies, who were concentrated in the perferal areas of the country and supported by the U.S., Germany, Czechoslovakia, Japan Ukraine and Poland. By late 1922, the Red (Soviet) army had secured enough land and won enough victories to insure the safety of the Soviet regime.

During the Civil War, the nationalization of industry and transportation and the confiscation of all supplies needed for the war effort drained the economy. Trotsky and Lenin disagreed over how to improve the economic situation. Trotsky believed that the strict war-time policies should continue and Lenin believed that a relaxation of controls would stimulate economic growth.

Lenin's death in 1924 led to a power struggle between Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, who was then the general secretary of the Communist Party. Stalin soon consolidated his power and in 1927 a party refarendum totally repudiated Trotsky's policies. In 1929 Stalin was pronounced leader of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Union. Trotsky was thrown out of the Parry and exiled to Almaty. He was later banished from the country and in 1940, was killed in Mexico by one of Stalin's agents.

In the 1920s improvements in the economy and foreign affairs occurred. In 1924 a new constitution reorganized the country into the Russian, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republics. Transcaucasia was later divided into the Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republics. Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kirgizistan were separated from the Russian SSR. Beginning in the 1930s, Stalin started to purge persons who were suspected to be in opposition to the Party. The Great Purge began as a reaction to the 1934 assassination of Sergy M. Kirov, a Party member and Stalin supporter. Show trials, mass executions, and mass deportations to Siberian work camps resulted in millions of deaths.

The USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. However, in June 1941, the Germans launched a massive invasion of the USSR. The turning point was Germany's failure to seize and hold Stalingrad from September 1942 until February 1943. With Briish and American Lend-Lease aid, Russian counterthrusts were able to drive the Germans out of the USSR, the Balkans and Eastern Europe within the next two years. Stalin died on March 5, 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee. In 1956 Khrushchev condemned Stalin and began the de-Stalinization of the USSR on all levels. Stalin's body was removed from the Stalin-Lenin tomb in Moscow.

The Hungarian uprising in 1956 was brutally supressed under Khrushchev's orders. Khrushchev did advocate peaceful coexistance with capitalist countries, but he continued to enlarge the country's nuclear weapons arsenal. The USSR aided the Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro but withdrew missiles from the country in September and October 1962 after a confrontation with U.S. President Kennedy.

In October 1964 Khrushchev was deposed and Leonid I. Brezhnev became party first secretary. In 1968, the USSR led the other Warsaw Pact nations in an invasion of Czechoslovakia in order to curb the liberalization of the country's governmenmt.

When Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in October of 1973, the Soviet Union began massive arms airlifts to the two Arab nations. In 1974, the USSR replaced the weapons that Syria had lost in the 1973 war and continued to supply aid to Egypt. The Soviets also aided the North Vietnamese and other south-east asian Communists during the 1960s and 1970s. Soviet arms, aid and advisors were sent to many African nations in the 1970s including: Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Pressure from the West caused the Soviet government to allow more than 130,000 Jews and more than 40,000 ethnic Germans to emigrate from the USSR in the 1970s. Many artists, writers and intellectuals left also.

In 1979, Soviet troops entered Afganistan to aid the government in its fight against the rebels. A futile eight year civil war resulted and the Soviets withdrew their troops in 1988.

Severe food shortages in the early 1980s resulted in the implementation of a new agricultural program. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was selected as general secretary of the Communist Party. He was the youngest member of the Politburo and signaled a change in attitude in the country. He held four summit meetings with U.S. president Reagan.

In 1987, Gorbachev began a program of reforms. The program expanded freedims and democratized the political process through openess (glastnost) and restructuring (perestroika). In 1989 the first Soviet Parliament since 1918 was held. The reforms were opposed by old-line Communists in the USSR and Eastern Bloc nations.

Communist hard-liners within the government attempted a coup in August 1991. On August 19, an announcement that the Vice President had taken over the country because Gorbachev was ill resulted in a declaration of a state of emergency. Russian Republic President Boris N. Yeltsin called for a general strike and 50,000 demonstrated at the Parliament in his support. On August 21 Gorbachev was reinstated as president, but on August 24 he resigned as leader of the Communist Party. Several republics including Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan declared independence. On August 29 the Soviet government suspended all activities of the Communist Party.

On December 21 the USSR officially ceased to exist. Eleven of the twelve remaining republics: Armenia, Azerbijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Kazakhstan, Kirghiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tadzhikistan (now Tajikistan), Turkmenia (now Turkmenistan), and Uzbekistan formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Gorbachev resigned on December 25. The Parliament recognized the dissolution of the USSR on December 26, 1991.

Boris Yeltsin was elected Presiden in June 1991 by popular vote. He began a campaign of economic reform in early 1992.

The December 1993 Parliamentary elections gave the communists and ultra-nationalists large victories. Parliamentary elections in December 1995 gave the communists a majority in Parliament. In the June 1996 presidental election, Yeltsin defeated communist Gennadi Zyuganov.

A military conflict with the successionist state of Chechnya began on the last day of 1994 and ended in a cease fire in 1996. An agreement between Russia and Ukraine over the Black Sea Fleet was reached. Disputes such as the ownership of the Kuril Islands with Japan and the fate of Sevastopol remain unresolved. Russia has continued to oppose the NATO expansion, which will probably include Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary. However, Russia did join NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) program.