List of cities in the USSR by population. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union)

USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union for short) - a former state that existed in Eastern Europe and Asia.
The USSR was a superpower-empire (in a figurative sense), a stronghold of socialism in the world.
The country existed from 1922 to 1991.
The Soviet Union occupied one-sixth of the total surface area of ​​the Earth. It was the largest country in the world.
The capital of the USSR was Moscow.
There were many large cities in the USSR: Moscow, Leningrad (modern St. Petersburg), Sverdlovsk (modern Yekaterinburg), Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Ufa, Kuibyshev (modern Samara), Gorky (modern Nizhny Novgorod), Omsk, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Saratov, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkov, Minsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Baku, Alma-Ata.
The population of the USSR before its collapse was about 250 million people.
The Soviet Union had land borders with Afghanistan, Hungary, Iran, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Finland, and Czechoslovakia.
The length of the land borders of the Soviet Union was 62,710 kilometers.
By sea, the USSR bordered the USA, Sweden and Japan.
The size of the former empire of socialism was impressive:
a) length - more than 10,000 km from the extreme geographical points (from the Curonian Spit in the Kaliningrad region to Ratmanov Island in the Bering Strait);
b) width - more than 7,200 km from the extreme geographical points (from Cape Chelyuskin in the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug of the Krasnoyarsk Territory to the city of Kushka in the Mary region of the Turkmen SSR).
The shores of the USSR were washed by twelve seas: the Kara, Barents, Baltic, Laptev Sea, East Siberian, Bering, Okhotsk, Japanese, Black, Caspian, Azov, Aral.
There were many mountain ranges and systems in the USSR: the Carpathians, the Crimean Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Pamir Range, the Tien Shan Range, the Sayan Range, the Sikhote-Alin Range, the Ural Mountains.
The Soviet Union had the largest and deepest lakes in the world: Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, Lake Baikal (the deepest in the world).
There were as many as five climate zones on the territory of the Soviet Union.
On the territory of the USSR there were areas where there was a polar day and a polar night for four months a year and only polar moss grew in the summer, and areas where there was never snow all year round and palm trees and citrus trees grew.
The Soviet Union had eleven time zones. The first zone differed from universal time by two hours, and the last by as much as thirteen hours.
The administrative-territorial division of the USSR rivaled in its complexity only the modern administrative-territorial division of Great Britain. The administrative units of the first level were the union republics: Russia (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), Belarus (Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic), Ukraine (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), Kazakhstan (Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), Moldova (Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic), Georgia (Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic), Armenia (Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), Turkmenistan (Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic), Tajikistan (Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic), Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic), Uzbekistan (Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic), Lithuania (Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic), Latvia (Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic), Estonia (Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic).
The republics were divided into administrative units of the second level - autonomous republics, autonomous okrugs, autonomous regions, territories and regions. In turn, autonomous republics, autonomous okrugs, autonomous regions, territories and regions were divided into administrative units of the third level - districts, and those, in turn, were divided into administrative units of the fourth level - city, rural and township councils. Some republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Moldova) were immediately divided into second-level administrative units - into districts.
Russia (RSFSR) had the most complex administrative-territorial division. It included:
a) cities of union subordination - Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol;
b) autonomous Soviet socialist republics - Bashkir ASSR, Buryat ASSR, Dagestan ASSR, Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR, Kalmyk ASSR, Karelian ASSR, Komi ASSR, Mari ASSR, Mordovian ASSR, North Ossetian ASSR, Tatar ASSR, Tuva ASSR, Udmurt ASSR, Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic;
c) autonomous regions - Adygea Autonomous Okrug, Gorno-Altai Autonomous Okrug, Jewish Autonomous Okrug, Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Okrug, Khakass Autonomous Okrug;
d) regions - Amur, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Gorky, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kalinin, Kaluga, Kamchatka, Kemerovo, Kirov, Kostroma, Kuibyshev, Kurgan, Kursk, Leningrad, Lipetsk Magadan, Moscow, Murmansk, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Oryol, Penza, Perm, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan Saratov, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tambov, Tomsk, Tula, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chita, Yaroslavl:
e) autonomous districts: Aginsky Buryat Autonomous District, Komi-Permyak Autonomous District, Koryak Autonomous District, Nenets Autonomous District, Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous District, Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous District, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, Chukotka Autonomous District, Evenki Autonomous District, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.
f) territories - Altai, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Primorsky, Stavropol, Khabarovsk.
Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR) included only regions. Its members included: Vinnitskaya. Volyn, Voroshilovgrad (modern Lugansk), Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhitomir, Transcarpathian, Zaporozhye, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kiev, Kirovograd, Crimean (until 1954 part of the RSFSR), Lviv, Nikolaev, Odessa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil , Kharkov, Kherson, Khmelnitsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv regions.
Belarus (BSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Brest, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, Mogilev, Vitebsk regions.
Kazakhstan (KazSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Aktobe, Alma-Ata, East Kazakhstan, Guryev, Dzhambul, Dzhezkazgan, Karaganda, Kzyl-Orda, Kokchetav, Kustanai, Mangyshlak, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk, Taldy-Kurgan, Turgai, Ural, Tselinograd , Shymkent region.
Turkmenistan (TurSSR) included five regions: Chardzhou, Ashgabat, Krasnovodsk, Mary, Tashauz;
Uzbekistan (UzSSR) included one autonomous republic (Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), the city of republican subordination of Tashkent and the regions: Tashkent, Fergana, Andijan, Namangan, Syrdarya, Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khorezm.
Georgia (GrSSR) consisted of the city of republican subordination of Tbilisi, two autonomous republics (Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Adjarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and one autonomous region (South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug).
Kyrgyzstan (KyrSSR) consisted of only two regions (Osh and Naryn) and the city of republican subordination of Frunze.
Tajikistan (Tad SSR) consisted of one autonomous region (Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Okrug), three regions (Kulyab, Kurgan-Tube, Leninabad) and the city of republican subordination - Dushanbe.
Azerbaijan (AzSSR) consisted of one autonomous republic (Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), one autonomous region (Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug) and the city of republican subordination of Baku.
Armenia (Armenian SSR) was divided only into districts and a city of republican subordination - Yerevan.
Moldova (MSSR) was divided only into districts and the city of republican subordination - Chisinau.
Lithuania (Lithuanian SSR) was divided only into districts and the city of republican subordination - Vilnius.
Latvia (LatSSR) was divided only into districts and the city of republican subordination - Riga.
Estonia (ESSR) was divided only into districts and the city of republican subordination - Tallinn.
The USSR has gone through a difficult historical path.
The history of the empire of socialism begins with the period when the autocracy collapsed in tsarist Russia. This happened in February 1917, when a Provisional Government was formed in place of the defeated monarchy.
The provisional government failed to restore order in the former empire, and the ongoing First World War and the failures of the Russian army only contributed to the further escalation of unrest.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Provisional Government, the Bolshevik Party led by V.I. Lenin organized an armed uprising in Petrograd at the end of October 1917, which led to the elimination of the power of the Provisional Government and the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd.
The October Revolution led to an escalation of violence in a number of regions of the former Russian Empire. A bloody Civil War began. The fire of war engulfed all of Ukraine, the western regions of Belarus, the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, the Caucasus and Turkestan. For about four years, Bolshevik Russia waged a bloody war against supporters of the restoration of the old regime. Part of the territories of the former Russian Empire was lost, and some countries (Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) declared their sovereignty and unwillingness to accept the new Soviet government.
Lenin pursued the single goal of creating the USSR - the creation of a powerful power capable of resisting any manifestation of counter-revolution. And such a power was created on December 29, 1922 - Lenin’s Decree on the formation of the USSR was signed.
Immediately after the formation of the new state, it initially included only four republics: Russia (RSFSR), Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR), Belarus (BSSR) and Transcaucasia (Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (ZSFSR)).
All government bodies of the USSR came under the strict control of the Communist Party. No decision was made on the spot without the approval of the party leadership.
The highest authority in the USSR during the time of Lenin was the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
After Lenin's death, a struggle for power in the country broke out in the highest echelons of power. With equal success, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky,
G.I. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev, A.I. Rykov. The future dictator-tyrant of the totalitarian USSR, J.V. Stalin, turned out to be the most cunning of all. Initially, in order to destroy some of his competitors in the struggle for power, Stalin teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev into the so-called “troika”.
At the XIII Congress, the question of who would become the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the country after Lenin’s death was decided. Zinoviev and Kamenev managed to rally most of the communists around themselves and most of them voted for I.V. Stalin. So a new leader appeared in the country.
Having led the USSR, Stalin first began to strengthen his power and get rid of his recent supporters. This practice was soon adopted by the entire Stalinist circle. Now, after the elimination of Trotsky, Stalin took Bukharin and Rykov as his allies in order to jointly oppose Zinoviev and Kamenev.
This struggle of the new dictator continued until 1929. This year, all of Stalin’s strong competitors were exterminated; there were no more competitors to him in the struggle for power in the country.
In parallel with the internal party struggle, until 1929, Lenin’s NEP (New Economic Policy) was carried out in the country. During these years, private enterprise was not yet completely prohibited in the country.
In 1924, the new Soviet ruble was introduced into circulation in the USSR.
In 1925, at the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a course was set for collectivization and industrialization of the entire country. The first five-year plan is being developed. Dispossession of lands began, millions of kulaks (rich landowners) were exiled to Siberia and the Far East, or were driven away from good fertile lands and received in return waste lands that were not suitable for agriculture.
Forced collectivization and dispossession caused an unprecedented famine in 1932-1933. Ukraine, the Volga region, Kuban, and other parts of the country were starving. Cases of theft in the fields have become more frequent. A notorious law was adopted (popularly called the “Law of Three Ears”), according to which anyone caught with even a handful of grain was sentenced to long prison terms and long-term exile to the regions of the Far North, Siberia and the Far East.
1937 was marked by a year of mass repressions. The repressions primarily affected the leadership of the Red Army, which seriously weakened the country's defense in the future and allowed the army of Nazi Germany to reach almost unhindered almost all the way to Moscow.
The mistakes of Stalin and his leadership cost the country dearly. However, there were also positive aspects. As a result of industrialization, the country has reached second place in the world in terms of industrial production.
In August 1939, just before the start of World War II, a non-aggression treaty and the division of Eastern Europe (the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was concluded between Nazi Germany and the USSR.
After World War II began, the USSR and Germany divided the territory of Poland between themselves. The USSR included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and subsequently Bessarabia (became part of the Moldavian SSR). A year later, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were included in the USSR, which were also turned into union republics.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany, violating the non-aggression pact, began bombing Soviet cities from the air. Hitler's Wehrmacht crossed the border. The Great Patriotic War began. The main production facilities were evacuated to the Far East, Siberia and the Urals, and the population was evacuated. At the same time, a complete mobilization of the male population into the active army was carried out.
The initial stage of the war was affected by the strategic mistakes made by the Stalinist leadership in previous years. There were few new weapons in the army, and the fact that
there was, inferior in its characteristics to the German. The Red Army was retreating, many people were captured. Headquarters threw more and more units into battle, but this did not have much success - the Germans stubbornly advanced towards Moscow. In some sectors of the front, the distance to the Kremlin was no more than 20 kilometers, and on Red Square, according to eyewitnesses of those times, artillery cannonade and the roar of tanks and airplanes could already be heard. German generals could observe the center of Moscow through their binoculars.
Only in December 1941 did the Red Army go on the offensive and push the Germans back 200-300 kilometers to the west. However, by spring, the Nazi command managed to recover from defeat and changed the direction of the main attack. Now Hitler’s main goal was Stalingrad, which opened up further advance to the Caucasus, to the oil fields in the area of ​​​​Baku and Grozny.
In the summer of 1942, the Germans came close to Stalingrad. And by the end of autumn, fighting was already taking place in the city itself. However, the German Wehrmacht was unable to advance beyond Stalingrad. In the middle of winter, a powerful offensive of the Red Army began, a 100,000-strong group of Germans under the command of Field Marshal Paulus was captured, and Paulus himself was captured. The German offensive failed, moreover, it ended in complete defeat.
Hitler planned to take his last revenge in the summer of 1943 in the Kursk region. The famous tank battle took place near Prokhorovka, in which a thousand tanks from each side took part. The Battle of Kursk was lost again, and from that moment the Red Army began its rapid advance westward, liberating more and more territories.
In 1944, all of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus were liberated. The Red Army reached the state border of the USSR and rushed to Europe, to Berlin.
In 1945, the Red Army liberated most of the countries of Eastern Europe from the Nazis and entered Berlin in May 1945. The war ended with the complete victory of the USSR and their allies.
In 1945, Transcarpathia became part of the USSR. A new Transcarpathian region was formed.
After the war, the country was again gripped by famine. Factories and factories did not work, schools and hospitals were destroyed. The first five post-war years were very difficult for the country, and only in the early fifties the situation in the country of the Soviets began to improve.
In 1949, the atomic bomb was invented in the USSR as a symmetrical response to the US attempt at nuclear dominance in the world. Relations with the United States deteriorate and the Cold War begins.
In March 1953, J.V. Stalin dies. The era of Stalinism in the country is ending. The so-called “Khrushchev thaw” is coming. At the next party congress, Khrushchev sharply criticized the former Stalinist regime. Tens of thousands of political prisoners are being released from numerous camps. Mass rehabilitation of the repressed begins.
In 1957, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR.
In 1961, the world's first manned spacecraft was launched in the USSR with the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
During the time of Khrushchev, in contrast to the NATO bloc created by Western countries, the Warsaw Pact Organization was created - a military alliance of Eastern European countries that had taken the socialist path of development.
After Brezhnev came to power, the first signs of stagnation began to appear in the USSR. Industrial production growth has slowed. The first signs of party corruption began to appear in the country. The Brezhnev leadership and Brezhnev himself did not realize that the country was facing the need for fundamental changes in politics, ideology, and economics.
With Mikhail Gorbachev coming to power, the so-called “perestroika” began. A course was taken towards the wholesale eradication of domestic drunkenness, towards the development of private
entrepreneurship. However, all the measures taken did not produce positive results - in the late eighties it became clear that the huge empire of socialism had cracked and was beginning to fall apart, and the final collapse was only a matter of time. In the Union republics, especially in the Baltic states and Ukraine, a massive growth of nationalist sentiments began, associated with the declaration of independence and separation from the USSR.
The first impetus for the collapse of the USSR was the bloody events in Lithuania. This republic was the first of all the union republics to declare its secession from the USSR. Lithuania was then supported by Latvia and Estonia, which also declared their sovereignty. Events in these two Baltic republics developed more peacefully.
Then Transcaucasia began to boil. Another hot spot has emerged - Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia announced the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan responded by launching a blockade. A war began that lasted for five years, now the conflict is frozen, but tensions between the two countries remain.
Around the same time, Georgia separated from the USSR. A new conflict begins on the territory of this country - with Abkhazia, which wished to secede from Georgia and become a sovereign country.
In August 1991, a putsch begins in Moscow. The so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) was created. This was the last attempt to save the dying USSR. The putsch failed, Gorbachev was actually removed from power by Yeltsin. Immediately after the failure of the putsch, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Central Asian republics and Moldova declared their independence and were proclaimed sovereign states. The most recent countries to proclaim their sovereignty are Belarus and Russia.
In December 1991, a meeting of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, held in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus, stated that the USSR as a state no longer exists and annulled Lenin’s decree on the formation of the USSR. An agreement was signed to create the Commonwealth of Independent States.
So the empire of socialism ceased to exist, just one year short of its 70th anniversary.

These cities were not on the maps. Their residents signed non-disclosure agreements. Before you are the most secret cities of the USSR.

Classified as "secret"

Soviet ZATOs received their status in connection with the location there of objects of national importance related to the energy, military or space spheres. It was practically impossible for an ordinary citizen to get there, and not only because of the strict access control regime, but also due to the secrecy of the location of the settlement. Residents of closed cities were ordered to keep their place of residence strictly secret, and even more so not to disclose information about secret objects.

Such cities were not on the map, they did not have a unique name and most often bore the name of the regional center with the addition of a number, for example, Krasnoyarsk-26 or Penza-19. What was unusual in ZATO was the numbering of houses and schools. It began with a large number, continuing the numbering of the locality to which the residents of the secret city were “assigned”.

The population of some ZATOs, due to the proximity of dangerous objects, was at risk. Disasters also happened. Thus, a large leak of radioactive waste that occurred in Chelyabinsk-65 in 1957 endangered the lives of at least 270 thousand people.

However, living in a closed city had its advantages. As a rule, the level of improvement there was noticeably higher than in many cities in the country: this applies to the service sector, social conditions, and everyday life. Such cities were very well supplied, scarce goods could be obtained there, and the crime rate there was practically reduced to zero. For the costs of “secrecy”, residents of ZATOs received an additional bonus to the base salary.

Zagorsk-6 and Zagorsk-7

Sergiev Posad, which was called Zagorsk until 1991, is known not only for its unique monasteries and temples, but also for its closed towns. In Zagorsk-6 the Virology Center of the Research Institute of Microbiology was located, and in Zagorsk-7 the Central Institute of Physics and Technology of the USSR Ministry of Defense.

Behind the official names, the essence is a little lost: in the first, in Soviet times, they were developing bacteriological weapons, and in the second, radioactive weapons.
Once in 1959, a group of guests from India brought smallpox to the USSR, and our scientists decided to use this fact for the benefit of their homeland. In a short time, a bacteriological weapon was created based on the smallpox virus, and its strain called “India-1” was placed in Zagorsk-6.

Later, endangering themselves and the population, scientists at the research institute developed deadly weapons based on South American and African viruses. By the way, this is where tests were carried out with the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus.

It was difficult to get a job in Zagorsk-6, even in a “civilian” specialty - the impeccable purity of the biography of the applicant and his relatives was required, almost to the 7th generation. This is not surprising, since attempts have been made to get to our bacteriological weapons more than once.

The military stores of Zagorsk-7, which were easier to get to, always had a good selection of goods. Residents from neighboring villages noted the stark contrast to the half-empty shelves of local stores. Sometimes they created lists to centrally purchase food. But if it was not officially possible to enter the town, then they climbed over the fence.

The status of a closed city was removed from Zagorsk-7 on January 1, 2001, and Zagorsk-6 is closed to this day.

Arzamas-16

After the Americans used atomic weapons, the question arose about the first Soviet atomic bomb. They decided to build a secret facility for its development, called KB-11, on the site of the village of Sarova, which later turned into Arzamas-16 (other names Kremlev, Arzamas-75, Gorky-130).

The secret city, built on the border of the Gorky region and the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was quickly put under enhanced security and surrounded along the entire perimeter by two rows of barbed wire and a control strip laid between them. Until the mid-1950s, everyone lived here in an atmosphere of extreme secrecy. KB-11 employees, including family members, could not leave the restricted area even during the holiday period. An exception was made only for business trips.

Later, when the city grew, residents had the opportunity to travel to the regional center on a specialized bus, and also receive relatives after they received a special pass.
Residents of Arzamas-16, unlike many fellow citizens, learned what real socialism is.

The average salary, which was always paid on time, was about 200 rubles. The store shelves of the closed city were bursting with abundance: a dozen varieties of sausages and cheeses, red and black caviar, and other delicacies. Residents of neighboring Gorky never dreamed of this.

Now the nuclear center of Sarov, former Arzamas-16, is still a closed city.

Sverdlovsk-45

Another city “born by order” was built around plant No. 814, which was engaged in uranium enrichment. At the foot of Mount Shaitan, north of Sverdlovsk, Gulag prisoners and, according to some sources, Moscow students worked tirelessly for several years.
Sverdlovsk-45 was immediately conceived as a city, and therefore was built very compactly. It was distinguished by the orderliness and characteristic “squareness” of the buildings: it was impossible to get lost there. “Little Peter,” one of the city’s guests once put it, although to others his spiritual provincialism reminded him of patriarchal Moscow.

By Soviet standards, life was very good in Svedlovsk-45, although it was inferior in supply to the same Arzamas-16. There was never a crowd or flow of cars, and the air was always clean. Residents of the closed city constantly had conflicts with the population of neighboring Nizhnyaya Tura, who were jealous of their well-being. It happened that they would waylay townspeople leaving the watch and beat them, purely out of envy.

It is interesting that if one of the residents of Sverdlovsk-45 committed a crime, then there was no way back to the city, despite the fact that his family remained there.

The city's secret facilities often attracted the attention of foreign intelligence. So, in 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down not far from it, and its pilot was captured.

Svedlovsk-45, now Lesnoy, is still closed to casual visitors.

Peaceful

Mirny, originally a military town in the Arkhangelsk region, was transformed into a closed city in 1966 due to the nearby Plesetsk test cosmodrome. But the level of closure of Mirny turned out to be lower than that of many other Soviet ZATOs: the city was not fenced with barbed wire, and document checks were carried out only on access roads.

Thanks to its relative accessibility, there have been many cases where a lost mushroom picker or an illegal immigrant who had entered the city to buy a scarce commodity suddenly turned up near secret facilities. If no malicious intent was seen in the actions of such people, they were quickly released.

Many residents of Mirny call the Soviet period nothing more than a fairy tale. “A sea of ​​toys, beautiful clothes and shoes,” one of the city residents recalls her visits to Children’s World. In Soviet times, Mirny acquired the reputation of a “city of strollers.” The fact is that every summer graduates of military academies came there, and in order to cling to a prosperous place, they quickly got married and had children.

Mirny still retains its status as a closed city.

With the permission of the Government, the Central Statistical Office of the USSR developed voter lists for the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 14, 1954 by gender and age, counting children and youth under 17 years of age in cities on April 1, 1954, as well as recording the rural population on January 1, 1954 .

Carrying out this work makes it possible, at least approximately, to understand the question of the population of the USSR.

In connection with this, the USSR Central Statistical Office reports:

1 According to data as of January 1, 1955, the population of the USSR is approximately 195.7 million people. *)

The last population census of the USSR was carried out according to the state on January 17, 1939. The population of the USSR, according to census data (within the boundaries of that time), was 170.6 million people.

In August 1240, at the UP session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Comrade Molotov stated: “As population estimates show, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will now be able to speak with a powerful voice on behalf of the 193 million population, not counting the population growth of the USSR in 1939 and 1940.”

The figure of 193 million is the last figure about the population of the USSR that was officially published in the Soviet press. It should be noted that the population of the USSR, excluding areas west of the Soviet-Polish border established by the 1945 treaty (excluding areas west of the Curzon Line), was 191.7 million in 1940.

_____________________________

*) This calculation of the total population, as well as the data given below on the urban and rural population of the USSR and the population of individual union republics at the beginning of 1955, can be further clarified on the basis of annual reports on the registration of births and deaths by civil registry offices for 1954. annual reports on registration by police authorities in the cities of arrival and departure of the population, as well as reports from village councils on the size of the rural population. recorded in the household books as of January 1, 1955.

2. Below is a comparison of the estimated population of the USSR as of January 1, 1955 with data from 1940;

When determining the total population, an adjustment was made for the incompleteness of the census of the population aged 18 years and older, obtained on the basis of voter lists, mainly due to the following persons:

a) living in cities without registration and therefore not included in the list of voters;

c) those who left their place of permanent residence and did not take part in the elections because for some reason they did not receive a certificate of voting rights.

The undercount also occurred due to the exclusion from the voter lists of some sectarians who did not take part in the elections for religious reasons and at the expense of persons who did not enjoy the right to vote, according to the Regulations on elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The adjustment for undercounting of these persons is determined in the amount of 3.3 million people or 2.8% in relation to the number of voters included in the voter lists. In addition, the total population includes the approximate number of incarcerated persons.

The adjustment for inaccuracy of records of children and youth under the age of 18 in house books and in household books of village soviet accounting amounted to 2.7 million people or 4.2% of direct accounting data.

The amount of adjustment for under-registration of children was partially verified on the basis of data on the registration by civil registry offices of born and deceased children of the corresponding birth years. As for the adjustment for undercounting of persons 18 years of age and older, it is very approximate.

The correctness of this amendment can be partially determined during the upcoming elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, by obtaining from the election commissions data on the number of voters who were issued certificates for the right to vote, and the number of those who actually voted using these certificates, as well as on the number of those who were eliminated and excluded from voting. lists of voters who have not received voting certificates.

3. By gender, the population of the USSR is distributed as follows:

4. There is a sharp difference in the change in the population under the age of 18 and older, which is associated with the low birth rate during the war years. This can be seen from the following data:

	Millions of people		1955 as a percentage of 1939
	1940	1955
Whole population
including those aged:
from 0 to 17 years
of them:
18 years and older
of them:

5. A sharp reduction in the number of children, especially children aged 7-13 years, will affect changes in the adult population in the coming years.

If we assume that the mortality rate remains unchanged, then the population of the USSR for individual age groups will change as follows:

	Millions of people
	14-17 years old	18-43 years old	50-59 years old

The number of young people aged 14-17 will decrease until 1961. The population aged 15-49 years, although it will increase, but the annual increase in the number of this group is declining from 2.3 million people in 1955 to 1.2 million in 1959 and to 0.2 million people in 1960, in in which those born in 1942 enter the age group of 18 years.

6. In the territory where the population census was conducted on January 17, 1939, the population was 170.6 million people in 1939, and 176.3 million people in 1955.

In the western regions of the BSSR, Ukrainian SSR, Moldavian SSR and the Baltic republics in 1940 there was a population of 21.1 million people, in 1955 19.2 million people.

For individual union republics the population is:

	Population in thousands		1955 as a percentage of 1939
	1940	1955
Total for the USSR
including:
Ukrainian SSR
Byelorussian SSR
Uzbek SSR
Kazakh SSR
Georgian SSR
Azerbaijan SSR
Lithuanian SSR
Moldavian SSR
Latvian SSR
Kirghiz SSR
Tajik SSR
Armenian SSR
Turkmen SSR
Estonian SSR
Karelo-Finnish SSR

7. Below are data on the population of the largest cities of the USSR (with a population of over 400 thousand people) compared to 1939:

	Population in thousands		1955 as a percentage of 1939
	1939	1955
Leningrad (including Kolpino, Kronstadt and other cities and urban settlements subordinate to the Leningrad City Council)
including Leningrad
Baku (including oil field settlements subordinate to the Baku City Council)
including Baku
Kuibyshev
Novosibirsk
Sverdlovsk
Chelyabinsk
Dnepropetrovsk
Rostov-on-Don
Stalingrad

8. When distributing the population across the territory, the following convention was allowed, as was customary during the 1939 population census: the population aged 18 years and older, included in the electoral lists of precincts at military units and military formations, and persons in prison, are distributed by territory in proportion to the population,

In this regard, in some republics, regions and cities the population will be greater, and in others less than when including the military personnel actually located in them. For example, the following are given:

	Population at the beginning of 1955 in thousands
		when including voters in military units and military formations by actual location	with a conditional proportional distribution of military personnel across the territory (as was customary during the 1939 census)
Murmansk region
Moscow
Leningrad
Primorsky Krai
Ukrainian SSR

Proportional distribution is more appropriate, since the deployment of the army remains unknown. The population calculated in this way for areas with a large number of military personnel differs relatively little from the civilian population. Therefore, when using population data, according to the CSO, the procedure adopted during the 1939 census should be preserved.

9. After the war, data on the population of the USSR were not published and, according to Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of March 1, 1948 No. 535-204os, were considered top secret and included in the list of the most important information constituting state secrets. This was due to the fact that it was considered inappropriate to publish a population size less than the pre-war one, especially since the official size of losses in an interview with I.V. Stalin with a correspondent of the newspaper "Pravda" on March 13, 1946 was named only 7 million people:

“As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irrevocably lost about seven million people in battles with the Germans, as well as thanks to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude.”

The figure of 7 million obviously did not take into account that during the war, along with significant acute population losses, there was also a sharp decrease in the birth rate and a relative increase in the death rate of the population, especially in areas subject to enemy occupation and in cities such as Leningrad .

Our press published only the size of the urban population of the USSR - about 80 million people. As for the total population of the USSR, it was indirectly and roundedly (200 million) named in the speech of Comrade N. S. Khrushchev. at a meeting of Komsomol members and youth of Moscow and the Moscow region on January 7, 1955.

The foreign press cited a number of different figures for the population of the USSR, usually more than 200 million. Recently the figure of 210 million people at the beginning of 1954 was published in the West German journal World Economy Archives, in an article by Dr. Max Biel (Vol. 72, Part 2, 1954). The author of this article obtained the population of the USSR by multiplying the published number of electoral districts for elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 14, 1954 (700 districts) by the average population of the electoral district (300 thousand people according to the norm provided for elections to the Council of the Union.

In connection with the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, the population figure of the Ukrainian SSR was given. At the same time, in the theses on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, approved by the Central Committee of the CPSU and published on January 12, 1954, it is stated “that the Ukrainian SSR now has more than 40 million people,” and in the report of Comrade Kirichenko at the anniversary session of the Supreme Sonnet of the Ukrainian SSR On May 22, 1954 it was said that “The Ukrainian SSR currently has a population of over 42 million.” The figure for the population of the Ukrainian SSR, given in the report of Comrade Kirichenko and later repeated in the report of Comrade Puzanov, is exaggerated; according to the calculations of the Central Statistical Office, the population of the Ukrainian SSR is 40 million people.

Based on the population data presented in this report, the CSO believes that it is advisable to conduct a census of the population of the USSR no earlier than in 3-4 years, when the population of the USSR should significantly exceed 200 million people.

In this regard, it should be recalled that the Statistical Commission of the UN Economic and Social Council, at its eighth session held in April 1954, considered it desirable for as many countries as possible to conduct a population census in 1960 or 1961.

Until now, the CSO has not provided information on the population for use by ministries, departments and other organizations, which creates great difficulties for them in planning work.

The Central Statistical Office of the USSR requests permission to provide ministries, departments and local governing bodies for official use in secret, estimated population data for the USSR, republics, territories, regions and individual cities, abolishing the existing procedure by which these data are considered top secret.

Proposals that population data should not be considered a state secret were also submitted to the Council of Ministers of the USSR by the commission of Comrade Serov.

HEAD of the Central Statistical Office of the USSR
(B.CTAPOBCKY)

<от руки>signature<А. Вострикова>signature<С. Бекунова>

RGAE. F.1562. Op.33. D.2990. L.L.49-56

Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich (1894-1971) - in 1955, first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee
Kirichenko Alexey Illarionovich (1908-1975) – in 1954, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine
Puzanov Alexander Mikhailovich (1906-1998) – in 1954 Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR
Serov Ivan Aleksandrovich (1905-1990) - in 1956 chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Russians take a long time to harness, but travel quickly

Winston Churchill

USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), this form of statehood replaced the Russian Empire. The country began to be ruled by the proletariat, which achieved this right by carrying out the October Revolution, which was nothing more than an armed coup within the country, bogged down in its internal and external problems. Nicholas 2 played an important role in this state of affairs, who actually drove the country into a state of collapse.

Education of the country

The formation of the USSR took place on November 7, 1917 according to the new style. It was on this day that the October Revolution occurred, which overthrew the Provisional Government and the fruits of the February Revolution, proclaiming the slogan that power should belong to the workers. This is how the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was formed. It is extremely difficult to unambiguously assess the Soviet period of Russian history, since it was very controversial. Without a doubt, we can say that at this time there were both positive and negative aspects.

Capital Cities

Initially, the capital of the USSR was Petrograd, where the revolution actually took place, bringing the Bolsheviks to power. At first there was no talk of moving the capital, since the new government was too weak, but later this decision was made. As a result, the capital of the union of Soviet socialist republics was moved to Moscow. This is quite symbolic, since the creation of the Empire was conditioned by the transfer of the capital to Petrograd from Moscow.

The fact of moving the capital to Moscow today is associated with economics, politics, symbolism and much more. In fact, everything is much simpler. By moving the capital, the Bolsheviks saved themselves from other contenders for power in the conditions of the civil war.

Leaders of the country

The foundations of the power and prosperity of the USSR are connected with the fact that the country had relative stability in leadership. There was a clear, unified party line, and leaders who had been at the head of the state for a long time. It is interesting that the closer the country came to collapse, the more often the General Secretaries changed. In the early 80s, leapfrog began: Andropov, Ustinov, Chernenko, Gorbachev - the country did not have time to get used to one leader before another appeared in his place.

The general list of leaders is as follows:

• Lenin. Leader of the world proletariat. One of the ideological inspirers and implementers of the October Revolution. Laid the foundations of the state.
• Stalin. One of the most controversial historical figures. With all the negativity that the liberal press pours into this man, the fact is that Stalin raised industry from its knees, Stalin prepared the USSR for war, Stalin began to actively develop the socialist state.
• Khrushchev. He gained power after the assassination of Stalin, developed the country and managed to adequately resist the United States in the Cold War.
• Brezhnev. The era of his reign is called the era of stagnation. Many people mistakenly associate this with the economy, but there was no stagnation there - all indicators were growing. There was stagnation in the party, which was disintegrating.
• Andropov, Chernenko. They didn’t really do anything, they pushed the country towards collapse.
• Gorbachev. The first and last president of the USSR. Today everyone blames him for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but his main fault was that he was afraid to take active action against Yeltsin and his supporters, who actually staged a conspiracy and a coup.

Another interesting fact is that the best rulers were those who lived through the times of revolution and war. The same applies to party leaders. These people understood the price of a socialist state, the significance and complexity of its existence. As soon as people came to power who had never seen a war, much less a revolution, everything went to pieces.

Formation and achievements

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began its formation with the Red Terror. This is a sad page in Russian history, a huge number of people were killed by the Bolsheviks who sought to strengthen their power. The leaders of the Bolshevik Party, realizing that they could only retain power by force, killed everyone who could somehow interfere with the formation of the new regime. It is outrageous that the Bolsheviks, as the first people's commissars and people's police, i.e. those people who were supposed to keep order were recruited from thieves, murderers, homeless people, etc. In a word, all those who were disliked in the Russian Empire and tried in every possible way to take revenge on everyone who was somehow connected with it. The apogee of these atrocities was the murder of the royal family.

After the formation of the new system, the USSR, headed until 1924 Lenin V.I., got a new leader. He became Joseph Stalin. His control became possible after he won the power struggle with Trotsky. During Stalin's reign, industry and agriculture began to develop at a tremendous pace. Knowing about the growing power of Hitler's Germany, Stalin paid great attention to the development of the country's defense complex. In the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was involved in a bloody war with Germany, from which it emerged victorious. The Great Patriotic War cost the Soviet state millions of lives, but this was the only way to preserve the freedom and independence of the country. The post-war years were difficult for the country: hunger, poverty and rampant banditry. Stalin brought order to the country with a harsh hand.

International situation

After Stalin's death and until the collapse of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics developed dynamically, overcoming a huge number of difficulties and obstacles. The USSR was involved by the United States in an arms race that continues to this day. It was this race that could become fatal for all of humanity, since both countries were in constant confrontation as a result. This period of history was called the Cold War. Only the prudence of the leadership of both countries managed to keep the planet from a new war. And this war, taking into account the fact that both nations were already nuclear at that time, could have become fatal for the whole world.

The country's space program stands apart from the entire development of the USSR. It was a Soviet citizen who was the first to fly into space. He was Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. The United States responded to this manned space flight with its first manned flight to the Moon. But the Soviet flight into space, unlike the American flight to the moon, does not raise so many questions, and experts do not have a shadow of doubt that this flight really took place.

Population of the country

Every decade the Soviet country showed population growth. And this despite the multimillion-dollar casualties of the Second World War. The key to increasing the birth rate was the social guarantees of the state. The diagram below shows data on the population of the USSR in general and the RSFSR in particular.

You should also pay attention to the dynamics of urban development. The Soviet Union was becoming an industrialized country, whose population gradually moved from villages to cities.

By the time the USSR was formed, Russia had 2 cities with a population of over a million (Moscow and St. Petersburg). By the time the country collapsed, there were already 12 such cities: Moscow, Leningrad Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa and Perm. The union republics also had cities with a population of one million: Kyiv, Tashkent, Baku, Kharkov, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Donetsk.

USSR map

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991, when in White Forest the leaders of the Soviet republics announced their secession from the USSR. This is how all the Republics gained independence and autonomy. The opinion of the Soviet people was not taken into account. A referendum held just before the collapse of the USSR showed that the overwhelming majority of people declared that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics should be preserved. A handful of people, led by the Chairman of the CPSU Central Committee M.S. Gorbachev, decided the fate of the country and the people. It was this decision that plunged Russia into the harsh reality of the “nineties.” This is how the Russian Federation was born. Below is a map of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Economy

The economy of the USSR was unique. For the first time, the world was shown a system in which the focus was not on profit, but on public goods and employee incentives. In general, the economy of the Soviet Union can be divided into 3 stages:

1. Before Stalin. We are not talking about any economics here - the revolution has just died down in the country, there is a war going on. Nobody seriously thought about economic development; the Bolsheviks held power.
2. Stalin's economic model. Stalin implemented a unique idea of ​​economics, which made it possible to raise the USSR to the level of the leading countries of the world. The essence of his approach is total labor and the correct “pyramid of distribution of funds.” The correct distribution of funds is when workers receive no less than managers. Moreover, the basis of the salary was bonuses for achieving results and bonuses for innovations. The essence of such bonuses is as follows: 90% was received by the employee himself, and 10% was divided between the team, workshop, and supervisors. But the worker himself received the main money. That's why there was a desire to work.
3. After Stalin. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev overturned the economic pyramid, after which a recession and a gradual decline in growth rates began. Under Khrushchev and after him, an almost capitalist model was formed, when managers received much more workers, especially in the form of bonuses. Bonuses were now divided differently: 90% to the boss and 10% to everyone else.

The Soviet economy is unique because before the war it was able to actually rise from the ashes after the civil war and revolution, and this happened in just 10-12 years. Therefore, when today economists from different countries and journalists insist that it is impossible to change the economy in one election term (5 years), they simply do not know history. Stalin's two five-year plans turned the USSR into a modern power that had a foundation for development. Moreover, the basis for all this was laid in 2-3 years of the first five-year plan.

I also suggest looking at the diagram below, which presents data on the average annual growth of the economy as a percentage. Everything we talked about above is reflected in this diagram.

Union republics

The new period of the country's development was due to the fact that several republics existed within the framework of the single state of the USSR. Thus, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had the following composition: Russian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Tajik SSR, Armenian SSR, Turkmen SSR SSR, Estonian SSR.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were 24 million-plus cities. 4 of them had a population of over 2 million. 23 of them were already over a million people according to the 1989 census, and Volgograd with 999 thousand population crossed this threshold a little later, during the year.
I decided to see what has now happened to the population of Soviet cities with a population of over a million and what their fate was after the collapse of the USSR.

Below is a table based on the results of my research. Unfortunately, for some post-Soviet cities outside the Russian Federation, the data varies, and in some, such as Baku, Alma-Ata or Tbilisi, there is also a large scatter, so I tried to take either data from national statistical committees or from Wiki with confirmation from the source. In some places I had to look in external sources. For clarity, the value of 2000-2002 was also taken. (for Russia - 2002, Ukraine - 2001, others in different ways), times of the highest depopulation, which almost everywhere occurred at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Green background - population growth, red - depopulation.
Red numbers - if the city's population is below the Soviet value of 1989.
Red numbers on a green background - the city’s population has not recovered to the level of 1989, but the low point has been passed and there is an increase relative to the beginning of the 2000s.
The source of data for 1989 is the official census results published in a brochure.

As you can see, the record holders for growth are Moscow, Almaty and Baku. All have more than 20% growth. Belarusian Minsk is close to them in terms of dynamics. Peter overcame a hole in the early 2000s and then began to gradually recover.

The worst situation is in Ukrainian megacities, which gradually lost their integrated industry with the all-Union complex after the collapse of the USSR and are still degrading. Donetsk has lost its million-plus status, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa are already on the verge. Kharkov also shows consistently negative values. Kyiv is an exception; all surviving economic forces from all over the country gather there, as the capital.

In Russia, the worst situation is with Nizhny Novgorod, which is developing according to the Ukrainian model. I wonder why. The rest of the million-plus population are now recovering after the peak of depopulation in the early 2000s. Even Perm, which dropped out of the million-plus cities, again joined them. And many millionaires have exceeded the values ​​of 1989, but most of them are quite recent.

Sustainable depopulation in Yerevan. Tashkent is growing quite moderately, I thought more (apparently, it is strictly regulated by the authorities). The situation with Baku is ambiguous - the current population is shown in the table, but the so-called “forced migrants” from areas abandoned in the early 1990s as a result of local wars. There are approximately 200-250 thousand of them. In Tbilisi, during the time of Saakashvili, a constant increase was recorded.

A curious picture, of course.