Northern Eurasia · Empire and revolution
Republics of the Soviet Union
1917–1922
Following the October Revolution, Lenin became head of the new government (the Council of People's Commissars) of what became, on 7 November 1917, the Russian Soviet Republic. The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) in January 1918, and the Fifth Congress adopted its first constitution on 10 July 1918.
- Existed
- 1917–1922
- Shown on the map
- 1920–1921
- Peak area
- 21.6M km²
- Region
- Northern Eurasia
The RSFSR
Following the October Revolution, Lenin became head of the new government (the Council of People's Commissars) of what became, on 7 November 1917, the Russian Soviet Republic. The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) in January 1918, and the Fifth Congress adopted its first constitution on 10 July 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) exited Russia from World War I at enormous territorial cost.
Proliferation of soviet republics
Amid the Russian Civil War (1917/1918–1922) between the Bolshevik "Reds" and the "Whites" (aided by Allied intervention from Britain, France, Japan, and the US), the Red Army spread Soviet power across the former empire, creating a patchwork of soviet republics: the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR (constitutions modeled on the RSFSR, 1919), short-lived soviet republics in the Baltic and Transcaucasus (e.g., the Terek and North Caucasian Soviet Republics, and the Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia SSRs of 1920–1922). Through a series of "federal" treaties (1919–1921), the RSFSR progressively subordinated these republics' military, economic, and foreign affairs to Moscow.
Toward Union
By 1920 the RSFSR was the dominant force politically, militarily, and demographically. On 10 August 1922 a committee chaired by Stalin (People's Commissar of Nationalities) drew up a plan for federal union; Lenin insisted the republics join as nominal equals rather than being absorbed. This produced the USSR (see §15). The RSFSR's leaders in this period were Lenin (as chairman of Sovnarkom) with Stalin, Trotsky (Red Army), and others.
Common questions
- What was the Republics of the Soviet Union?
- Following the October Revolution, Lenin became head of the new government (the Council of People's Commissars) of what became, on 7 November 1917, the Russian Soviet Republic. The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) in January 1918, and the Fifth Congress adopted its first constitution on 10 July 1918.
- When did the Republics of the Soviet Union exist?
- The Republics of the Soviet Union existed 1917–1922. On this map it is drawn 1920–1921.
- How large was the Republics of the Soviet Union?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Republics of the Soviet Union covered about 22 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity, ruler and battle as the basis of these profiles, cross-checked against Encyclopaedia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Russian History, and against the scholarship of Janet Martin, Charles Halperin, Serhii Plokhy, Simon Franklin and Krivosheev. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Republics of the Soviet Union en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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