ABSTRACT
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) or USSR was a federation of 15 nominally independent member republics,1 even though Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan held UN seats from 1945 onwards.2 Most republics had been administrative units of the Russian empire (Rossiiskaya Imperiya).3 The Russian empire and Soviet Union were unitary states, not federations of independent republics.4 The Ukraine was one of the Soviet Union’s founding republics (Ukrainskaya SSR) together with the RSFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, and the Belorussian SSR in December 1922.5 Its Soviet version was larger than imperial Russian Ukraine. Both included a subdivision called “Novorossiya” (New Russia) that contemporary separatists want re-annexed to Russia.6
