ABSTRACT
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or the Soviet Union) was the first socialist country in history to attempt to realize in practice an ideological utopia. The creation of this new state, based on the teachings of Karl Marx (1818-83) and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), was announced in Moscow in December 1922 and ended in December 1991 when the presidents of the Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine signed the Belovezhsky Agreement restoring political independence to these and other republics which formed the union. Located in eastern Europe, as well as in the northern and central parts of Asia, the USSR occupied one-sixth of the world’s land area - 22.27 million square kilometres (8.6 million square miles). The population (according to 1990 statistics) was 285 million, with the capital in Moscow (population 9.2 million).
