Skip to content
Curated category

Former socialist republics

  • East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was born on the 7th of October 1949 from the wreckage of a war and the hardening of a Cold War…
  • North VietnamNorth Vietnam declared its existence on the 2nd of September 1945, when Hồ Chí Minh stood before the world and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam…
  • Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaThe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a country that once occupied 255,804 square kilometers in the heart of the Balkans, stretching from the…
  • Socialist Republic of RomaniaOn the 25th of December 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad moments after a drumhead court-martial delivered its verdict.
  • Republic of MahabadIn late August 1941, Allied forces invaded Iran and the Soviet Union took control of the northern region. The absence of a central government in Tehran…
  • Hungarian People's RepublicThe Hungarian People's Republic was born on the 20th of August 1949, when a newly elected parliament passed a constitution that was, by most accounts, a…
  • Azerbaijan People's GovernmentThe Azerbaijan People's Government was proclaimed in Tabriz in 1945, and for just over a year it controlled a slice of northern Iran that Soviet forces had…
  • Ba'athist IraqBa'athist Iraq came to power on the 17th of July 1968, when a small number of military units and civilian Ba'athists seized key government buildings in…
  • Kazakh Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence on the 16th of December 1991 as the very last republic to secede from the Soviet Union.
  • Czechoslovak Socialist RepublicThe Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was born on the 25th of February 1948, when President Edvard Beneš, fearing civil war and Soviet intervention…
  • Polish People's RepublicIn February 1945, the Red Army occupied the entire country of Poland. Joseph Stalin presented his Western allies with a fait accompli at the Yalta Conference.
  • Ukrainian Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Bolsheviks convened a separate congress and declared the first Soviet Republic of Ukraine on the 24th of December 1917.
  • Republics of the Soviet UnionThe Republics of the Soviet Union were described in the 1977 constitution as "sovereign Soviet socialist states" that had freely chosen to unite into one…
  • Russian Soviet Federative Socialist RepublicThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was proclaimed on the 7th of November 1917, hours after Bolshevik forces overthrew the provisional…
  • Byelorussian Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic spent most of the twentieth century as a place other powers fought over, traded away, and occasionally forgot.
  • Mongolian People's RepublicIn July 1921, cavalry under Damdin Sükhbaatar captured the capital of Mongolia with Soviet troop support. This event marked the Mongolian People's Revolution…
  • People's Republic of BulgariaThe People's Republic of Bulgaria was born on the night of the 9th of September 1944, when communist guerrillas launched a coup that ended a monarchy and…
  • People's Socialist Republic of AlbaniaOn the 10th of January 1946, a small Balkan nation declared itself a people's republic, and began one of the most isolated and doctrinaire communist…
  • Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet RepublicThe Russian Empire dissolved in 1918, leaving the Caucasus provinces to form their own Transcaucasian Federation. This new state lasted only two months…
  • Soviet UnionOn the 26th of December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule.
  • MyanmarMyanmar covers more land than any other country in Mainland Southeast Asia, and roughly 55 million people live inside its borders.