It was established in 1922 as a union of four socialist republics created after the 1917 October Revolution, namely the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. The years that followed saw the addition of the Uzbek and Tajik SSRs; the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved in 1936 in favor of the elevated SSRs of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. From 1956 to 1991, the union comprised 15 member republics, two of which had their own member seats at the United Nations.
The USSR represented a groundbreaking political alternative for the working class as the first stable socialist state in history. This was remarkable especially in a time period where workers in the Western world were still struggling for basic union rights; the 1924 Soviet Constitution and the 1936 Soviet Constitution represented some of the most progressive political advancements in history.
The Soviet Union developed under extreme pressure from capitalist states and global imperialism; during the Russian Civil War, starting from 1918, it suffered successive invasions by Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Poland, and several other minor European powers. Some of these interventions temporarily succeeded in overthrowing local soviets and installing anti-communist puppet regimes, although they were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the founding of the Soviet Union.
Barely two decades later, during World War II, the Nazi invasion represented the second imperialist war on the USSR, this time in the name of fascism. Although the fascists inflicted catastrophic damage on the western USSR and its population, the Red Army ultimately succeeded in repelling the Nazi forces and went on to play an integral role in the defeat of German Nazism in 1945.
Despite these difficulties, the Soviet Union achieved some of the most impressive economic developments in modern history. Socialism transformed a country of illiterate and starving peasants into an industrial superpower with one of the fastest growing economies on Earth. The Soviet people were one of the world’s best-educated and healthiest populations, responsible for some of history’s most impressive industrial and scientific achievements to date. And it provided a very influential model for other later socialist projects in places such as China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Starting from 1988, many SSRs seceded from the USSR before its illegal overthrow in 1991. Its past territory is now occupied by the successor states of Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Pridnestrovie, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Artsakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
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“Lol, socialism is for stinky poor people who are jealous of the rich! It’s politics of envy!”
This never makes sense to me because (while I’m preaching to the choir here) capitalism is also the politics of envy. Envy is also felt by the haves and I can provide ten examples right off the bat
Rich people are richer than ever and they look at their ill-gotten gains and say with a straight face “I don’t have enough”.
Greed isn’t that much different than envy “I want more and I’ll get more no matter who I have to F over!”
All of consumerism and advertisements do is foster a sense of envy “Consume our product because you aren’t good enough unless you have product!”
The rich envy what us lowly poors could HYPOTHETICALLY have and they regularly do anything in their power to make sure we don’t have. Look at how cities got ruined. In the mid-20th century it was the working class that lived in cities and the rich lived in suburbs. Sometime around the 80s rich people saw what poor people were up to and noticed they were creating culture. Rich people as a collective thought “oooooh, cool. It’s mine now! Poor people, you can have our suburbs we’re bored of 'em.” (and that’s how my granddad had to leave little italy in NYC and find himself in rural Ohio.) Rich people noticed poor people have something that rich people want, and the rich used gentrification to essentially steal the cities from the poor and turn cities into country clubs.
So many objectively cool things have been ruined because rich people wanted to steal it and then sell it back to other rich people and kick the poors out
Any time a landlord raises rent because you get a raise, that’s envy. A landlord saw what you got and wanted to steal it for himself
The whole concept of protectionism
As a rule: The less money you have, the more rich people want your money
People who regularly rub in what they have in other people’s faces also tend to be the most envious.
Look at right-wing reactionaryism towards the ruling class going easier on minorities or women even if it’s solely for a “just business, nothing personal” perspective rather than a commitment to social justice. In political science we learned that this is a precursor to fascism: privileged groups fearful that the people they have oppressed are “catching up”. Even in non oppressor/oppressed relations look at how the rich try to condition boomers to view millennials. Boomers are told to envy their own children for being young and possibly outshining them too. Therefore, boomers should pull the ladder up and also never retire or share any wisdom for the next generation, because the next generation is “the enemy”. If the world goes down with boomers, then so be it.
Sorry for the rant, I just hate it when people accuse the left of jealousy when everything reactionaries and capitalists do is either them wanting to steal something that isn’t there’s or protect their egos by making sure no one has what they have.