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"Soyuz nerushimyrespubliksvobodnykh
SplotilanavekivelikayaRus'.
Da zdravstvuyetsozdannyvoleynarodov
Yediny, moguchySovetsky Soyuz!"
"An unbreakable union of free republics,
The Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Long live the creation of the will of the people,
The united, mighty Soviet Union!"
Perhaps there are only few people who would not recognise these legendary lines. These are the first few lines from the anthem of the USSR. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more popularly known, simply as the Soviet Union to all and to some more learned people, perhaps by the official name of CCCP which stands for CоюзСоветскихСоциалистическихРеспублик (Soyuz SovetskikhSotsialisticheskikhRespublik). It was a state that pioneered a completely new form of society never before seen on Earth. Heralded as the very first communist state in the world, the creators of the Soviet Union, the "Bolsheviks", who were tired of the oppression of the nobles and the wealthy, dreamt of a state where everything would belong to the people as a whole, and no one would be able to amass wealth and power for his own greed.
Inspired by the legendary "Communist Manifesto" written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (whose real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), envisioned for the freedom and power to the working classes which throughout history had been oppressed and exploited by the wealthy and the nobility.As a result of his efforts and that of the millions following him, the great empire of Russia fell, with its Tsarist royalty overthrown in the infamous October revolution. In its place, appeared a united state comprising of 15 different republics, all united under the ideals of socialsm, equality, freedom and power to the masses. Their symbol being the mighty hammer and sickle, signifying the workers and farmers respectively. The Soviet Union was officially established on 30th of December 1922, and it became the first and the largest ever Socialist state of the world.
When the fires of World War II were burning Europe, it was the Soviet Union that had turned the tide of world war 2. When the Wehrmacht was conquering Europe under the impetus of the Nazi Regime, Adolf Hitler hada not so brilliant idea which was to invade and conquer the Soviet Union with the now infamous"Operation Barbarossa". Although initially, the defending Red armysuffered devastating losses due to poor training and lack of capable leaders, and a huge area of the Soviet Union was taken over by the Third Reich, the Soviets never gave up on their struggles to defend their motherland. By the time the Germans had arrived at the gates of Moscow, the momentum of the blitzkrieg had been crushed into a halt, and with the defeat of the 6th army at Stalingrad, Hitler's dreams of conquering the Soviet Union were crushed forever.
Finally, it would be the Red army to march into Berlin and defeat the Reich once and for all. However, the Soviet Union had paid adreary price for the victory, and they had paid it in blood. All in all, around 27 million people;including both military servicemen and civilians;perished in the Soviet Union, as a result of the war. Although Western nations have alwaysclaimed that "America and its allies won the war", the truth is that if Germany had not invaded the Soviet Union and without the Soviet troops fighting Hitler, most historians agree that Germany might have conquered most if not all of Europe including Britain itself.Had Hitler honoured the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and not invaded the Soviet Union;if the 200 divisions that stormed the Soviet Union were instead there to greet the American landings at Normandy, life then would not have been so easy for the Americans.
In its golden hour, the Soviet Union was a Global power no one dared trifle with, not even the USA and Europe combined. It had many great scientific achievements such as being the first to send an artificial satellites into space, the first to send a man into space, etc.Throughout its life, the Soviet Union was a strong militaristic state, with the largest army of its time. It had such a strong impacton the world, that all the powerful European nations had to ally under the USA, forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in order to deter what they believed to be a "Soviet Invasion of Europe".However, as mighty as it was, the fate of the Soviet Union was ultimately a tragic one. On the 26th of December 1991, after less than 70 years of its establishment,the Soviet Unioncollapsed, never to rise again. As a powerful state that had once dominated the politics of the world, it still was not without its flaws. It was a global superpower that unfortunately, because of pitiful reasons fell apart, and left behind a group of weakened nations which were nowhere near its strength, and probably would never again be.
