Why go
Distinguishing the Russian republic from the wider Soviet Union prevents two different political entities from being confused. The changes from wartime economic controls to limited private trade, and later the reckoning with Stalin’s rule, reveal shifts within a system often presented as unchanging.
The full story
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was followed by civil war and the economic controls known as war communism. Nationalisation and the requisition of grain provoked opposition. In 1921, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, allowing peasants to sell surplus produce and permitting some private commerce while the state retained major industries and infrastructure. The Soviet Union was established in December 1922. Its founding republics included Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian federation. The 1924 constitution described a federal structure of councils, or soviets, but political authority lay with the Communist Party leadership in Moscow. Soviet expansion in 1939–1940 included the invasion of eastern Poland, war with Finland and occupation of the Baltic states. The later war against Nazi Germany became a defining Soviet experience. After Stalin’s death in 1953, a leadership struggle brought Nikita Khrushchev to power. His 1956 denunciation of Stalin’s crimes marked a major change in the official account of the preceding era.