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
Foreign relations of the Soviet Union power struggles and foreign intervention, requested the neighboring Soviet Union to send military aid. Soviet intervention was seen as a hostile invasion by the United States and its allies, who funded the counter-revolutionary Mujahadeen, and thus led to a return to hostilities which were greatly exacerbated in the following years. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, he sought to restructure the Soviet Union to resemble the Scandinavian model of western social democracy and thus create a private sector economy. He removed Soviet troops from Afghanistan and began a hands-off approach in the USSR's relations