SOLD. Cold War Period Soviet Russian Poster

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state that spanned Europe and Asia during its existence from 1922 to 1991. On 23 August 1939 the Soviets signed the non-aggression agreement with Nazi Germany, with Stalin aiding the German war effort, until Hitler betrayed the pact with Stalin and invaded Russia. After the start of World War II, the formally neutral Soviets invaded and annexed territories of several Eastern European states, including eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In June 1941 the Germans invaded, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the majority of Allied casualties of the conflict, during the process of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces, such as intense battles such as at Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin, with the agreement of their allied partners, and the allies defeated Germany and World War II ended in Europe on 9 May 1945. The territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged in 1947, where the Eastern Bloc confronted the Western Alliance, which would unite in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1949.

Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period known as de-Stalinisation and the Khrushchev Thaw occurred under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. The country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialised cities. The USSR took an early lead in the Space Race with the first ever satellite. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed when the Soviet Union deployed troops in Afghanistan in 1979. The war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters.

In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to further reform and liberalise the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing economic stagnation. The Cold War ended during his tenure and in 1989, Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective Marxist-Leninist regimes. Strong nationalist and separatist movements broke out across the USSR. Gorbachev initiated a referendum—boycotted by the Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favour of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup. The main result was the banning of the Communist Party. The republics led by Russia and Ukraine declared independence. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned. All the republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognised as its continued legal personality in world affairs.

Code: 23886