Soviet Empire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)
The Red states represent Communist governments aligned with the Soviet Union. The Yellow states represents Communist governments aligned with the People's Republic of China. The Black states (North Korea and Yugoslavia) represent the Communist governments that were not aligned with either.
The Red states represent Communist governments aligned with the Soviet Union. The Yellow states represents Communist governments aligned with the People's Republic of China. The Black states (North Korea and Yugoslavia) represent the Communist governments that were not aligned with either.


Contents

[edit] Motivation of the term

Though the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor and declared itself anti-imperialist, critics argue that it exhibited certain tendencies common to historic empires:

  • Territorial expansion through invasion or subversion (e.g.: Caucasus, Central Asia, Poland, Finland, Baltic States);
  • Interference (including through the use of military force) in the internal politics of its allies (e.g.: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Afghanistan);
  • Strong central government controlling the governments of subsidiary and satellite territories;
  • A hierarchy of cultural domination that highly values the culture of the empire's center and denigrates the cultures of the periphery;
  • Economic exploitation of the periphery by the center.

However, because of the Soviet system's basis in communism, its internationalist orientation, and its competition for influence with the United States, often the center provided more economic aid for the periphery than it gained from the extraction of resources from the periphery.

The application of the term empire to the Soviet Union seems uncontroversial to critics of the Soviet system, but most scholars agree that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and modernizing nation states. [1]

[edit] The Soviet sphere of influence

Though there never was any formal "Soviet Empire", the Soviet Union did exert a strong influence over a number of nations. Thus, the Soviet Empire was said to consist of the following:

[edit] Member states of the Soviet Union

See also Republics of the Soviet Union


[edit] Members of Comecon

These countries were the closest allies of the Soviet Union. They were members of the Comecon, a Soviet-led economic community founded in 1949. In addition, the ones located in Eastern Europe were also members of the Warsaw Pact. They were sometimes called the Eastern bloc in English and were widely viewed as Soviet satellite states.

North Korea was a Soviet ally, but always followed a highly isolationist foreign policy and therefore it did not join the Comecon or any other international organization of Communist states.

[edit] Soviet involvement in other countries

States that had overtly communist governments in bright red, and states that the USSR believed at one point to be "moving toward socialism" in dark red. Not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies.
States that had overtly communist governments in bright red, and states that the USSR believed at one point to be "moving toward socialism" in dark red. Not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies.

A number of countries had pro-Soviet governments for shorter periods of time during the Cold War. In the political terminology of the Soviet Union, these were "countries moving along the socialist road of development", as opposed to the "countries of developed socialism", listed above. Most received some aid, either military or economic, from the Soviet Union, and were influenced by it to varying degrees. Their support for the Soviet Union was short lived for various reasons; in some cases the pro-Soviet government lost power, while in other cases the same government remained in power but changed its relations with the Soviet Union.

Some of these countries were not Communist states. They are marked in italic.

[edit] Communist states opposed to the Soviet Union

Some Communist states were openly opposed to the Soviet Union and many of its policies. Though their forms of government may have been similar, they were completely sovereign from the USSR and held only formal ties. Relations were often tense, sometimes even to the point of armed conflict.

[edit] Sino-Soviet Split

The Sino-Soviet split greatly ruptured the international Communist movement, as the two largest Communist states - China and the Soviet Union - broke ties and became hostile to each other. Before the split, in the late 1950s, the People's Republic of China was considered one of the Soviet Union's closest and most powerful allies, despite China being a developing nation. The Sino-Soviet split complicated the Cold War by opening a possible new front for the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The Communist great powers were no longer united against their capitalist enemies. Although Albania and Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia decided to side with China, most of the Communist nations stuck with the Soviet Union. The Chinese-inspired Maoist faction was nowhere near as powerful as the Soviet faction in the Communist world, but was a significant threat the Soviets had to contend with.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Beissinger, Mark R. 2006 "Soviet Empire as 'Family Resemblance,'" Slavic Review, 65 (2) 294-303; Dave, Bhavna. 2007 Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, language and power. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also