The Soviet Union

Abstract

The USSR was a unique empire in the universality of its claims and its aim of complete equality between nationalities. Its strengths and weaknesses were indissolubly connected. It was formally a federal state, with extensive rights given to constituent nationalities; in practice it was tightly centralized through Gosplan, the armed forces, the security services, and the Communist Party, with its messianic ideology. The USSR’s tight centralization ensured that in wartime it could mobilize social energy to an unprecedented extent, but also that in peacetime localized patronage became the main form of social cohesion. The economy was so rigidly planned as to discourage innovation, which meant that the USSR could not maintain its superpower status. Its nationality policy both encouraged ethnic feeling and repressed it. The final collapse was precipitated by the clash between the largest republic, Russia, and the Soviet Union as a whole.