ABSTRACT
For seven decades during the twentieth century, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, was the colossus among the nations of the world. Like the Russian Empire it succeeded, which an enthusiastic Russian nationalist once called “a whole world,” the Soviet Union, whatever one thought of it, surely was more than just another country. The Russians are the most numerous of a group of people known as the East Slavs, who have lived in the region that eventually became the European part of the Soviet Union for well over 1,000 years. The Soviet Union was populated by two other East Slavic people, the Ukrainians and the Belarusians. The Soviet Union’s core, like that of the fallen empire upon whose foundations it was built, was Russia and the Russian people, and its size and strength in many ways were a tribute to the Russian people’s ability to endure and survive an almost endless gauntlet of hardships.
