The Soviet Union—officially, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR—was a global superpower from 1922 until its collapse in 1991. At its height, it was the largest country in the world, taking up one-sixth of the planet's land mass and holding nearly 300 million people from more than 100 nationalities.
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Before the USSR officially ended, part of it symbolically died when the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow in January 1990—the ultimate emblem of western capitalism. NPR’s ‘Invisibilia’ explores what happened when McD’s asked its new Russian employees to sell McMuffins as the Americans did: with a smile (segment starts around 42 minutes in).
For three centuries, one family ruled the Russian Empire: the Romanovs. From 1613 to 1917, 18 Romanovs led the massive Eurasian country, including both Peter and Catherine the Great. The longstanding dynasty came to a sudden end under Nicholas II during the Russian Revolution, when the tsar was forced to abdicate amid food shortages and revolutionary fervor. Learn the basics of the dynasty with this quick overview.
Which political faction would you have belonged to if you’d lived through the Russian Revolution? Take this quiz from Arzamas Academy—with questions about private property, women’s suffrage, and the separation of church and state—to find out if your politics are more aligned with the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the Anarchists, or the Black Hundreds.
Scientific advancement was one of the Soviet government’s top priorities. This short listicle from History.com highlights seven moments when the USSR made history with its space explorations. See photos of Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to orbit the earth and return home safely, and watch a short video about the Space Race.
Being in a place where history happened is a special feeling. This interactive photo gallery from the Guardian captures that experience with then-and-now images of landmarks that played a part in the Russian Revolution. Scroll through archival photos of Bolshevik supporters marching down St. Petersburg’s Nevsky Prospekt, then move the slider to the right to see how the same street looks today.
This short biography from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a DC think tank, discusses the harsh policies of Lenin’s successor at the head of the Communist Party. The article includes not-so-fun facts. For example, Stalin (literally “man of steel”) wasn’t actually the Soviet leader’s real name. He adopted it to project an image of cold strength.
One of the most tense features of the Cold War between the US and the USSR was the nuclear arms race. Each country sank millions into their ever-expanding nuclear arsenals while schoolchildren practiced duck-and-cover drills. This clickable timeline from the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank, charts key moments in the arms race, from the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949 to Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speech.
What would the Russian Revolution have looked like if social media existed in 1917? This ambitious website from the former head of Russia’s TV channel Rain recounts the events leading up to the October Revolution as if they were Facebook posts, drawing on archival photos and the letters and diaries of contemporary figures like Leon Trotsky, Gertrude Stein, and Igor Stravinsky.
In this media-rich timeline, RFE/RL—an American-backed media outlet founded during the Cold War to counteract Soviet propaganda—chronicles the main events leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, beginning in 1985 with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev. Infographics detail memorable quotes and biographical data from the key figures in the transition from USSR to the Russian Federation.
Take a look at the 'Miracle on Ice' from the point of view of one of the losers in that famous 1980 Olympic hockey match in Lake Placid, New York. In this four-minute video, Slava Fetisov discusses his participation on the USSR's powerhouse hockey teams during the 1980s, and his eventual shift to the NHL, where he and many other Russians came to dominate later in the century.
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