Former federal State stretching over Europe and Asia, by very far the most extensive on the planet, with over 22.4 million km^². The USSR sprang up from the ‘Bolshevik’ (communist) Revolution of October 1917, under the leadership of Lenin, who changed fundamentally all the political, economic and social characteristics of an Imperial Russia run by the monarchy of the Tsars (1547-1917), whilst maintaining in Moscow’s orbit the non-Russian territories which had been conquered under the Empire (Central Asia, the Caucasus, etc.)

The USSR became a major power following the Second World War, notably thanks to the building up of its nuclear arsenal, to its scientific potential marked by its early success in the conquest of space, its demography (293 million inhabitants in 1991) and its political influence over  a section of the European Left (communist parties) and the developing countries.

Communist ideology in effect advocated the priority of a social progress in which all humans were equal, in a society ‘freed of any form of exploitation of man by man.’ These ideas found an obvious echo in the countries of the Third World and liberation movements fighting to emancipate themselves from the last vestiges of the colonial era, in the 1960s and 1070s.

Victorious over Nazi Germany at the side of the Western Europe countries and, above all, the United States, the USSR spread its influence after 1945 to the Central and Eastern European countries. The latter adopted, voluntarily or otherwise, a political, economic and social form of organisation comparable to that of the Soviet ‘model’: a central role for the Communist Party, the absence of democracy, a collectivisation of the majority of the means of production, a planned economy, etc. To that was added the creation of a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, designed to act as a counterweight to the Western military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which brought the countries of Western Europe together with the United States, Canada and Turkey.

The ingredients of the Cold War were thus in place from the end of the 1940s, when the USSR launched itself into a kind of competition for global leadership and challenged the United States for the ‘leadership role’ which seemed promised it, on a world level, since the end of the war. ‘East’ against ‘West’: the world little by little entered into a bipolar confrontation. The ‘East’ first of all: the USSR established itself as a partner in emancipation, the figurehead of peoples oppressed by the colonial powers. It aided, either directly or through intermediary allies, the liberation movements to challenge the metropolitan yoke and suggested that the young nations adopt a political, economic and social model comparable to its own. Then the ‘West’: following the United States, the Western European countries, Japan, Canada and Australia denounced ‘Soviet expansionism’ and championed a free market economy against ‘Communist totalitarianism,’ termed liberticide and incapable of satisfying the needs of the population.

From the 1950s to the 1980s the United States and the USSR embarked on a mammoth arms race which would earn them the epithet ‘superpowers.’ The two ‘giants’ would also set out on a race for global influence, in supporting their respective ‘camps’ in the conflicts which tore apart the Third World. The Korean War (1950-1953) and the second Vietnam War (1964-1975) are merely the most striking examples. Fortunately, the two superpowers would avoid, sometimes by a hair’s-breadth, engaging in a direct confrontation involving their nuclear arsenals. The reason for this avoidance is to be found in what is called the ‘Balance of Terror.’ Explanation: each of the two superpowers was equipped with a nuclear arsenal of such power and variety that a first nuclear strike on the part of one would have immediately triggered a blistering response by the other. Aware of this risk of ‘mutually assured destruction,’ the two capitals, Washington and Moscow, preferred not to lay themselves open to it.

The Balance of Terror came close to being disturbed when the American President, Ronald Reagan, announced his intention in 1983 to protect American territory from missile attacks, through a space based anti-missile shield, in the framework of a plan named ‘Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI),’ popularized through the term ‘Star Wars.’

The SDI tipped the Balance of Terror because it would have rendered United States territory inviolable to Soviet attack, whilst Soviet territory would have remained vulnerable to an American attack. The SDI project was abandoned in 1993, after the break up of the USSR.

But the SDI project was probably one of the factors which helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it would have obliged Moscow to new considerable spending in the arms race, at a time when its economy, handicapped by a lowering of petrol prices, was no longer capable of sustaining it.
Amongst the other causes generally put forward to explain the collapse of the USSR, can be cited:
- the poor performance the economy, incapable of providing normally for the needs of the population
- the persistence of a heavy and inefficient bureaucratic system
- the weariness of the population, and above all the intellectuals, in the face of the absence of democracy, and an increase of dissident activity
- the desire of the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe to free themselves from the Soviet system, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
- the resurgence of identity and religious claims in a number of the USSR’s federated Republics.

Aware of the weaknesses of his country, the last President of Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, tried in vain to remedy them through an ambitious but belated programme of reforms, which goes by the two names glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (reconstruction, renewal).

The disintegration of the USSR, in December 1991, would give birth to no less than 15 new independent nations in Eastern Europe, Caucasia and Central Europe. The disappearance of one of the two superpowers brought to an end a ‘bipolar’ world and ushered in an era of great uncertainty, in reducing the predictability factors in international relations. The Russian Federation (143 million inhabitants, 17 million km²) succeeded the USSR, inheriting its strategic arsenal and its permanent seat on the United nations Security Council.