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Main article: Politics of the Soviet Union
According to the most recent Soviet Constitution of 1977, the Soviet Union theoretically was a federal state consisting of fifteen republics joined together in a voluntary union and the government had a federal structure (see Constitution of the Soviet Union). The government of the Soviet Union implemented decisions made by the Communist Party (see Organization of the Communist Party of the USSR).
The organization of the CPSU was based on democratic centralism, the Leninist method of intraparty decision making. According to democratic centralism, lower party bodies executed the decisions of higher party bodies. The lowest bodies started from the town and district levels, working up to the Central Committee, the highest party body.
The party, using its nomenklatura authority, placed reliable individuals in leadership posts throughout the government. CPSU bodies monitored the actions of government ministries, agencies, and legislative organs. The highest government legislative body was the Supreme Soviet.
The leader of the Communist Party was the General Secretary. The party chief would sometimes hold other positions, such as the state presidency or premiership (see Leadership of the Soviet Union).
See also: Soviet law
Main article: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was denied recognition by most countries when it was founded in 1922. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934, but was expelled in 1939 amid the start of the Winter War. However, World War II established the USSR 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.
Soviet foreign policy played a major role determining the tenor of international relations for nearly four decades, and the Soviet Union had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet Union became a member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945. It also became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions. (see Soviet Union and the United Nations)
The CPSU Central Committee Politburo determined the major foreign policy guidelines. The overarching objectives of Soviet foreign policy were national security and the maintenance of hegemony over the Warsaw Pact.
As the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, Cold War superpower competition between the Soviet Union and the U.S. gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs in the 1960s and 1970s. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). Since the early 1970s, the Soviet Union concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the noncommunist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia claimed to be the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage. Russian foreign policy repudiated Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action, soliciting Western support for capitalist reforms in postcommunist Russia.
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