Republics of the Soviet Union


In the Soviet Union, a Union Republic or unofficially a Republic of the USSR was a constituent federated political entity with a system of government called a Soviet republic, which was officially defined in the 1977 constitution as "a sovereign Soviet socialist state which has united with the other Soviet republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and whose sovereignty is limited by membership in the Union. As a result of its status as a sovereign state, the Union Republic de jure had the right to enter into relations with foreign states, conclude treaties with them and exchange diplomatic and consular representatives and participate in the activities of international organizations. The Union Republics were perceived as national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 by a treaty between the Soviet republics of Byelorussia, Russian SFSR, Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine, by which they became its constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For most of its history, the USSR was a one-party state led by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Key functions of the USSR were highly centralized in Moscow until its final years, despite its nominal structure as a federation of republics; the light decentralization reforms during the era of perestroika and glasnost conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev as part of the Helsinki Accords are cited as one of the factors which led to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 as a result of the Cold War and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, a relic of the Soviet-Finnish War, became the only union republic to be deprived of its status in 1956. The decision to downgrade Karelia to an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR was made unilaterally by the central government without consulting its population. The official basis for downgrading the status of the republic was the changes that had occurred in the national composition of its population, as well as the need to reduce the state apparatus, the cost of maintaining which in 1955 amounted to 19.6 million rubles.

Overview

Chapter 8 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution is titled as the "Soviet Union is a union state". Article 70 stated that the union was founded on the principles of "socialist federalism" as a result of the free self-determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics. Article 71 listed all fifteen union republics that united into the Soviet Union.
According to Article 76 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, a union republic was defined as a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with other Soviet Republics into the USSR. Article 78 of the Constitution stated that the territory of a union republic may not be altered without its consent. The boundaries between republics may be altered by mutual agreement of the republics concerned, if the rest of the union agreed. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".
In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics. All of them, with the exception of the Russian SFSR, had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.
In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for separate branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense, allowing them to be recognized as de jure independent states in international law. This allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945.
The Soviet currency Soviet ruble banknotes all included writings in national languages of all the 15 union republics.
All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, with ten of them being very loosely organized under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Baltic states assert that their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was illegal, and that they therefore remained independent countries under Soviet occupation. Their position is supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United States. In contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate.
Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation. In accordance with provisions present in its Constitution, each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Throughout the Cold War, this right was widely considered to be meaningless; however, the corresponding Article 72 of the 1977 Constitution was used in December 1991 to effectively dissolve the Soviet Union, when Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus seceded from the Union. Although the Union was created under an initial ideological appearance of forming a supranational union, it never de facto functioned as one; an example of the ambiguity is that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s officially had its own foreign minister, but that office did not exercise any true sovereignty apart from that of the union. The Constitution of the Soviet Union in its various iterations defined the union as a federation with the right of the republics to secede. This constitutional status led to the possibility of the parade of sovereignties once the republic with de facto dominance over the other republics, the Russian one, developed a prevailing political notion asserting that it would be better off if it seceded. The de facto dominance of the Russian republic is the reason that various historians have asserted that the union was a unitary state in fact albeit not in law.
In practice, the USSR was a highly centralised entity from its creation in 1922 until the mid-1980s when political forces unleashed by reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev resulted in the loosening of central control and its ultimate dissolution. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, the political foundation of the Soviet Union was formed by the Soviets of People's Deputies. These existed at all levels of the administrative hierarchy with the Soviet Union as a whole under the nominal control of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, located in Moscow within the Russian SFSR.
Along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the parallel party organs, and appointments of all party and state officials required approval of the central organs of the party.
Each republic had its own unique set of state symbols: a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990, an anthem. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin.

Union Republics of the Soviet Union

The number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. From 1956 until its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics: in 1956, the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, created in 1940, was absorbed into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Rather than listing the republics in alphabetical order, the republics were listed in constitutional order. However, particularly by the last decades of the Soviet Union, the constitutional order did not correspond to order either by population or economic power.

Short-lived Union Republics of the Soviet Union

Non-union Soviet republics

The Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. The Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic was also proclaimed in 1918, but did not become a union republic and was made into an autonomous republic of the RSFSR, although the Crimean Tatars had a relative majority until the 1930s or 1940s according to censuses. When the Tuvan People's Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, and was instead established as an autonomous republic of the RSFSR.
The leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected. During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic.

Republics not recognized by the Soviet Union

EmblemNameFlagCapitalOfficial languagesIndependence from SSR declaredIndependence from USSR declaredPopulationArea Post-Soviet subject
Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist RepublicTiraspolRussian, Ukrainian, Moldovan2 September 199025 August 1991680,000
4,163
''nowrap|South Ossetia

Other defunct Soviet states

Several of the Union Republics themselves, most notably Russia, were further subdivided into Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. Though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines.
According to the constitution of the USSR, in case of a union republic voting on leaving the Soviet Union, autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs had the right, by means of a referendum, to independently resolve whether they will stay in the USSR or leave with the seceding union republic, as well as to raise the issue of their state-legal status.