Republics of the Soviet Union

• 1. Introduction

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  The Republics of the Soviet Union were described in the 1977 constitution as "sovereign Soviet socialist states" that had freely chosen to unite into one great union. That phrase, sovereign, was a legal fiction that kept the whole structure together, and eventually tore it apart. For nearly seven decades, fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics stretched from the Baltic coast to the borders of China, each with its own flag, its own coat of arms, and, except Russia until 1990, its own anthem. Each republic was awarded the Order of Lenin. On paper they could sign treaties, host embassies, and even leave the union whenever they wished. In practice, the Politburo in Moscow decided almost everything. How did a state built on the promise of national self-determination become one of the most centralized empires in modern history? And when the gap between the promise and the reality finally collapsed, what happened to the republics that were left behind?

• 2. A Union of Contradictions

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  Four republics signed the founding treaty in 1922: Byelorussia, the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine. What they created was officially a federation, but historians including Dmitri Volkogonov have argued it functioned as a unitary state in all but name. The Russian republic held de facto dominance over all the others, even though the constitution never granted it that power explicitly. Chapter 8 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution declared the union a "union state" founded on "socialist federalism." Article 78 stated that the territory of any republic could not be altered without its consent. Article 81 promised that the "sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR." Yet alongside the state administrative hierarchy ran a parallel structure of party organizations that gave the Politburo sweeping control over every republic's affairs. Appointments of all party and state officials required approval from the central organs of the party. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s officially had its own foreign minister, but that office exercised no true sovereignty apart from that of the union. The gap between constitutional text and political reality was not an oversight; it was the design.

• 3. The Rights That Weren't

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  A union republic, under the 1944 amendments to the All-Union Constitution, gained two striking new powers: its own branch of the Red Army and its own commissariats for foreign affairs and defense. Those amendments created enough of a legal basis for two republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945, alongside the USSR as a whole. De jure, every union republic could enter relations with foreign states, conclude treaties, exchange diplomats, and participate in international organizations. De facto, the right of secession guaranteed in successive constitutions from 1924 through 1977 was widely regarded during the Cold War as meaningless. Republics were listed not alphabetically but in constitutional order, which roughly corresponded to their population and economic power at the time of formation. By the final decades of the union, that constitutional order no longer matched either population or economic reality. The Soviet ruble banknotes, however, printed the names of all 15 union republics in their national languages, a small acknowledgment that something more than Russian was at stake.

• 4. The One Republic Demoted

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  Only one union republic ever lost that status while the Soviet Union stood. The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, created in 1940 as a relic of the Soviet-Finnish War known as the Winter War, was stripped of its union republic designation in 1956. The decision was made unilaterally by the central government without consulting the republic's population. Moscow offered two official reasons: the population had shifted so that roughly 80 percent of inhabitants were Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians; and the cost of maintaining the state apparatus, which had reached 19.6 million rubles in 1955, needed to be reduced. Karelia was downgraded to an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR, making it a cautionary example of how paper sovereignty could be revoked at the center's convenience.

• 5. Aspirants and Refusals

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  Several states and territories wanted in on the union and were kept out. In 1944, ideas of accession were circulating among Mongolian intellectuals and political figures, but the leader of the Mongolian People's Republic, Khorloogiin Choibalsan, dismissed the matter as "useless banter," calling it "untimely, and even harmful." His successor Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal supported the idea, though nothing substantial came of it. Todor Zhivkov, the leader of Bulgaria, proposed in 1963 and again in the early 1970s that his country join as a union republic. Nikita Khrushchev rejected the idea outright, concluding that Zhivkov wanted "easy access to higher living standards." Leonid Brezhnev turned down the later proposal on diplomatic grounds. Analysts have suggested Zhivkov raised the idea as a bargaining chip to secure economic support, not as a sincere push for union. During the Soviet-Afghan War, a defector told the Chicago Tribune that the Soviet Union had floated the idea of annexing northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic under the name the "Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic," though no such republic was ever formed.

• 6. Glasnost and the Parade of Sovereignties

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  Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, launched in the late 1980s under the banners of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) and linked to the Helsinki Accords, were designed to liberalize and revitalize the union. They set off a chain of consequences no one fully anticipated. Political liberalization allowed republic governments to voice nationalist sentiments openly. Fractures spread through the Communist Party itself, weakening its ability to govern. Boris Yeltsin led a nationalist and right-wing movement in Russia that undermined the union's foundations from within. The central role of the Communist Party was removed from the constitution entirely, and after an attempted coup the party was banned from operating. By the 6th of September 1991, the Soviet Union's State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, bringing the number of union republics down to 12. The Baltic states maintained that their 1940 incorporation under the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had always been illegal, a position backed by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the United States. On the 8th of December 1991, the remaining republic leaders signed the Belavezha Accords, formally agreeing to dissolve the USSR and replace it with a Commonwealth of Independent States. On the 25th of December, Gorbachev announced his resignation and transferred all executive powers to Yeltsin.

• 7. What the Republics Became

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  The Council of Republics voted to dissolve the Union the day after Gorbachev stepped down. Every former republic became an independent country. Ten of them, all except the Baltic states, Georgia, and Ukraine, fell under the loose heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Some reconstituted themselves as parliamentary republics. Others, particularly in Central Asia, became highly autocratic states under leaders drawn from the old Party elite. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria, and Gagauzia had sought union status during the final turmoil; their fates remained tangled in disputes that outlasted the Soviet collapse. The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, centered on Tiraspol with a 1989 population of 680,000, declared sovereignty but was never recognized by the Soviet Union itself. Article 72 of the 1977 Constitution, the same right of secession that had been treated as a dead letter for decades, was the legal mechanism Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus used in December 1991 to end the union it had supposedly protected.