Soviet Union Forged: Communism Unites the Republics

Delegates from the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics gathered in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on December 30, 1922, and voted to ratify the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, establishing the state that would dominate global politics for the next seven decades. Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik revolution, was too ill to attend. He was at his dacha in Gorki, partially paralyzed from a series of strokes, dictating increasingly alarmed memoranda warning that the union was being constructed on terms that would enable authoritarian abuse. Lenin envisioned a voluntary federation of equals, but Stalin, then Commissar of Nationalities, pushed for a structure subordinating the other republics to Russia. The compromise granted each republic the right to secede on paper, but the Party centralized all power in Moscow. Georgia, which had been forcibly incorporated into the Transcaucasian Federation by the Red Army in 1921, was particularly resistant. Lenin, upon learning that Stalin envoy Sergo Ordzhonikidze had physically struck a Georgian Bolshevik during negotiations, was furious and began drafting what became known as his "Testament," which recommended Stalin removal from power. The new state controlled one-sixth of the Earth land surface and encompassed more than a hundred nationalities speaking dozens of languages. The founding treaty established Moscow as the capital and declared the union open to any socialist republic worldwide. The Soviet flag bore no national emblems, only the universal hammer and sickle. Lenin died on January 21, 1924, before he could act on his warnings. Within five years, Stalin had eliminated all rivals and built the totalitarian system Lenin feared. The Soviet Union survived sixty-nine years before collapsing on Christmas Day 1991. The right to secede, dismissed as decorative for decades, was the legal mechanism the republics ultimately used to dissolve it.