Republics of the Soviet Union Republics of the Soviet Union The Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Union Republics () of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were ethnically based proto-states that were subordinated directly to the Government of the USSR. For most of its history, the USSR was a highly centralized state; the decentralization reforms during the era of "Perestroika" ("Restructuring") and "Glasnost" ("Openness") conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev are cited as one of the factors which led to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. According to Article 76 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, a Union Republic was a
History of the Soviet Union the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War; the ideological U.S.–USSR struggle for the planetary domination of their respective socio–economic systems, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Nonetheless, since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism—an omnipotent General Secretary, anti-Trotskyism, a five-year planned economy (post-New Economic Policy), and repudiation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols—remained the character of Soviet society until the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the CPSU in 1985. The history of the Soviet