The Soviet system

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, was born from the socialist revolution of 1917 in Russia, led by Lenin. Its aim was a society of equality, with no private property, where the state owned the factories and the land.

How the Soviet system worked:

• One party, the Communist Party, ran everything. No other party was allowed.
• The state planned the whole economy: what to make, how much, and at what price.
• Every citizen was promised a job, housing, health care and a minimum standard of living. There was almost no unemployment.

After the Second World War, the countries of eastern Europe that the Soviet army had freed from the Nazis became communist too. With the USSR they formed the socialist bloc, called the 'second world' (the capitalist West being the 'first'). Their military alliance was the Warsaw Pact.

The achievements were real. The Soviet economy was the second most developed in the world, with good transport, energy and defence industries, and a space programme that sent the first man into space.

But the system had deep problems:

• It became bureaucratic and authoritarian: all power with one party, no free elections, no free press.
• People could not criticise the leaders; they could only show their anger in jokes and cartoons.
• Russia dominated the other fourteen republics, whose people often felt ignored.

Unlimited power with no one to check it slowly made the party unaccountable, and that is where the trouble began.