section_path: History/Soviet Union/Command economy and Soviet society
section_name: Command economy and Soviet society
paragraph_text: Command economy and Soviet society
  
  On 30 December 1922, Lenin and his aides formed the Soviet Union, by joining the Russian SFSR into a single state with the Byelorussian, Transcaucasian, and Ukrainian republics. Eventually internal border changes and annexations during World War II created a union of 15 republics, the largest in size and population being the Russian SFSR, which dominated the union politically, culturally, and economically.
  
  Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika was designated to take charge. Eventually Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to suppress all opposition factions and consolidate power in his hands to become the country's dictator by the 1930s. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of Socialism in One Country became the official line. The continued internal struggle in the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge.