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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), more commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a socialist state that existed from 1922 to 1991 in Eurasia. The Soviet Union later disintegrated into 15 separate states. The Soviet Union adopted a one-party political system held by the Communist Party until 1990. Although the Soviet Union was actually a political union of several Soviet republics with the capital in Moscow, in reality the Soviet Union transformed into a country with a highly centralized government and implemented a planned economic system.

The turbulent February Revolution in Russia in 1917 led to the collapse of the Russian Empire. Its successor, the Russian Provisional Government, survived only until it was overthrown by the October Revolution that same year. After the Bolsheviks' victory in the post-revolutionary civil war, the Soviet Union was founded on December 30, 1922, comprising the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR.

Following the death of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924, Josef Stalin succeeded him, winning a power struggle and leading the country through a massive industrialization process with a planned economy and political repression. In the wake of World War II, in June 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa despite the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between the two countries. After four years of extensive warfare, the Soviet Union emerged as one of the two victorious superpowers of the war, along with the United States.

The Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe were involved in the Cold War, a prolonged struggle for global ideological and political influence against the United States and its allies in the Western Bloc.