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Main article: History of the Soviet Union.
Revolutionary activity in Russia began with the Decembrist Revolt, uncovered in 1825, and although serfdom was abolished in 1861, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the majority of peasants and this served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament, the Duma, was established in 1906, but its power was severely limited by the tsar. Therefore political and social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages.
The February and October Revolutions (see also Russian Revolution) were followed by a period of civil war, in which the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR) and other Bolshevik led states came to control most of the former Russian Empire. On July 6, 1923 the RSFSR, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, and the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics signed a Treaty of Union forming the Soviet Union.
The collapse of Russian monarchy was followed by the eviction of the landlord class and the subdivision of land among peasant families. Peasants did not have chance to benefit from that, mainly because the policy of war communism. When the civil war came to an end, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced, which permitted free private enterprise and replaced requisitioning of food during the civil war by food tax. Peasants marketed their surplus produce at free prices during the years of the NEP.
After the death of the Soviet Union's revolutionary founding figure Vladimir Lenin ( 1924), there was a brief power struggle in the upper echelons of the Communist Party. Joseph Stalin finally emerged as the uncontested leader over rival Leon Trotsky, whom he subsequently had exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and had murdered in Mexico in 1940. Stalin assumed dictatorial powers over the USSR.
Under Stalin, who replaced Lenin's NEP with five year plans and collective farming, the Soviet Union (established 1922) became a major industrial power, but with effective political opposition eliminated during the 1930s by purges.
Stalin's government initially signed a nonaggresion treaty with Nazi Germany, with a secret appendix dividing up eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. The Nazis broke the pact in 1941 by invading the Soviet Union, whereupon the Soviets entered World War II on the Allies' side. After the Allies' victory, the Red Army controlled eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union established a number of nominally independent Communist client states there, creating a sphere of influence in eastern Europe analogous to the United States' sphere of influence in western Europe. The tensions between the two spheres developed into the Cold War, and each side began massive nuclear weapons armament programs to deter the other from directly engaging it in armed conflict.
World War II established the Soviet Union as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through military strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry.Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev promoted Soviet glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). A U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in 1986 and 1987 and a meeting of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev in late 1988 brought a reduction in arms in Europe.
The disintegration of Communist allies in Eastern Europe heralded the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As the Russian republic's Boris Yeltsin eclipsed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in power, the Soviet Union was peacefully dissolved in December 1991. Most former Soviet republics joined the Commonwealth of Independent States.
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