What was the Soviet System?

The USSR did not emerge gradually — it was born out of a sharp break with everything that came before. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established following Russia's socialist revolution of 1917, a revolution animated by socialist ideals set explicitly against capitalism, and by a determination to build a genuinely equal society. Few projects in history have gone as far in trying to erase private property altogether and engineer a society around the principle of equality by conscious design.

To carry this out, the Soviet system's architects placed enormous weight on two institutions: the state and the Communist Party. Political life revolved entirely around the Party, with no space for any rival party or organised opposition. Economic life worked the same way — everything was planned and directed by the state, leaving no real room for markets or private business.

Once the Second World War ended, the Eastern European countries the Red Army had freed from fascist occupation fell under Soviet influence, and each had its political and economic institutions rebuilt to mirror the USSR's own. Together these nations formed what came to be called the Second World, or the socialist bloc, bound together militarily through the Warsaw Pact under undisputed Soviet leadership.

Post-war, the USSR ranked as a genuine great power — its economy was surpassed only by that of the United States. It commanded an elaborate communications network and enormous reserves of oil, iron, and steel, even though much of its industrial machinery was already dated. It kept pace with the US in the arms race for stretches at a time, but only by paying a heavy price.

Despite this military standing, the Soviet Union trailed the West in several important ways: its transport and power infrastructure had grown outdated, and it was falling behind, more importantly, in meeting both the political and economic expectations of its own people. The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan added further strain. Wages kept rising on paper, but productivity and technology fell well behind Western levels, producing chronic shortages of consumer goods and a steadily rising food-import bill. By the late 1970s the economy was struggling, and by the 1980s it had settled into outright stagnation.

Change eventually came from the top. Mikhail Gorbachev pushed through economic and political reforms aimed at democratising the system, a programme that hardliners inside the Communist Party fought hard to resist. Those hardliners went so far as to attempt a coup in 1991 — but by then ordinary citizens had had a taste of genuine freedom and had no appetite for a return to the old order. Boris Yeltsin's resistance to the coup turned him into a national hero almost overnight.

Authority began draining away from the Soviet centre toward the individual republics, above all the more Europeanised ones, which increasingly saw themselves as sovereign nations in waiting. The Central Asian republics were the exception — they had little interest in independence and preferred to remain inside the Soviet federation. …