By: Jeremy Swantek

The overall territory of states that the Soviet Union had control over.

Nikita Khrushchev retired in Following the rule of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensures, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexia Kosygin as premier and Nikolai Podgorny as chairman of the Presidium. This system lasted until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970’s as the preeminent figure in soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the west while at the same time building up soviet military strength. After Brezhnev’s Death in 1982 the people of the union were ready for a change.

The increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union’s economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Two developments dominated the decade that followed: Beginning in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy and the party leadership. His policy of Glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. With the Soviet Union in bad economic shape and its satellite states in Eastern Europe abandoning communism, Gorbachev moved to end the cold war.

Gorbachev moved to end the cold war. The Soviet Union itself was crumbling. It pulled its army out of the 9 year long war with Afghanistan and stopped sending troops too aid its satellite states. They were also losing there hold on Germany with the tearing down of the Berlin wall and with east and West Germany pursuing unification. Up until 1991 Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders fought too end the soviet unions grip. The Soviet Union officially fell on December 26, After the Soviet Unions collapse, Russia voluntarily took all responsibility for the Soviet Unions debts and over sea properties of the Soviet Union.

Reagan meeting with Gorbachev.Soviet Army retreating from Afghanistan.

Prior to 1917, education was not free and was only provided to the nobility. Estimates from 1917 were that percent of the Russian population was illiterate. They started too get concerned with the illiteracy problem in the Soviet Union so they started taking anyone who could read and right a good amount and made them a teacher. By 1940 Joseph Stalin could announce that illiteracy had been eliminated. By 1960 nearly all of the soviet children had some source of education of any kind, the only exception being children living in remote areas. Nikita Khrushchev tried to improve education by making it more accessible and by making it clear too children that education was closely linked to the needs of society.

In 1917 Russia’s Health conditions were centuries behind the developed countries. The soviets were not able to fulfill all the health care needs of the people. After the communist takeover of power the life expectancy for all age groups went up. The soviet union became well more provisioned, It had the most hospitals and doctors at that time. The improvements In the soviet life expectancy was used by authorities to prove that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system. These improvements continued fairly stable during most years, although in the 1970’s went slightly down probably because of alcohol abuse.

Soviet pupils in Milovice.Typical Soviet hospital.

Due too the many languages coming from all different states in the USSR, they had too start giving them there own writing systems so they could communicate smoothly. When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication that language would attain an official language status. There were many minority languages that never received their own writing system, there for these people were forced to have a second language. Languages that were not wide spread enough were actually discontinued. Russian was the language of interethnic communications and assumed de facto the role of the official language in Russian was used in industry, military, party, and state management.

The Soviet Union was officially secular, atheism was supported in schools. Only 500 churches out of the 54,000 before the revolution remained open in In a measured poll by the soviet authorities in 1982, 20 percent of the soviet population confessed to be active religious believers. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. About half of the people, including members of the communist party and high-level government officials professed atheism.

The Russian alphabet. Russia’s two major religions.