what countries used to be part of the soviet bloc

Founded in 1922 as a confederation of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia (comprised of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia), the Wedlock of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) somewhen grew to 15 republics—and a globe-broad superpower. About 130 ethnic groups populated the vast land, which spanned 11 time zones.

According to Brigid O'Keeffe, professor of history at Brooklyn College, fears of nationalist revolts by non-Russians led the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet Union to guarantee the right to national territories, native-language schools and cultural organizations while using those institutions to saturate the population with socialist values and practices. "In many means, the Bolsheviks' nationality policy worked as intended—in the sense that it helped to integrate non-Russian peoples into the evolving Soviet state, society, economic system and culture," she says. "Simply it besides relentlessly demanded that Soviet people recall nearly themselves in national terms, and information technology placed ethnicity at the center of Soviet politics."

O'Keeffe says that when the Soviet Union bankrupt autonomously along national lines in 1991, "politicians and ordinary people alike across Eurasia had been well prepared past their shared Soviet by to chart new, distinctively national trajectories for themselves as independent nation-states." Some of those former republics transformed into pro-European democracies with marketplace-based economic science, while others remained aligned with Russia.

Map and flags of the 15 republics of the former USSR.

Getty Images

Here's what happened to the xv republics in the decades after the USSR'southward disintegration.

Russia

After the Soviet Union dissolved, its preeminent republic endured political dysfunction and struggled to privatize its primal command economic system. While oligarchs accumulated nifty wealth, most Russians faced loftier inflation and supply shortages. A yr after Russia President Boris Yeltsin ended a 1993 constitutional crunch by ordering the regular army to shell the state's legislative building, he launched a disastrous war in the breakaway democracy of Chechnya.

Following a cease-burn in 1997, Yeltsin's government ordered a second invasion of Chechnya in 1999 afterward Russian authorities asserted that bombings in Moscow and other cities were linked to Chechen militants. Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led the war machine response confronting Chechnya.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Since taking office and serving every bit president, prime minister and over again as president, Putin has consolidated dominance by controlling the media and removing presidential term limits while political opponents have been jailed, poisoned and killed. In seeking to re-establish Russia as a global power and limit Western influence in the former Soviet republics, Putin continued the war in Chechnya, annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022.

WATCH: Biography: Vladimir Putin on HISTORY Vault

Ukraine

One time known as Europe's breadbasket for its plentiful wheat fields, Ukraine deemed for a quarter of the USSR'due south agricultural production. Since independence, the country's politics have lurched between pro-Russian and pro-European governments. In 1994 Ukraine became the showtime one-time Soviet republic to peaceably transfer ability through an ballot, and information technology transitioned toward commercialism over the adjacent decade.

Afterwards pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych declared victory in a presidential election beset by fraud in 2004, the peaceful Orange Revolution forced a new vote that was won past pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who sought membership in the N Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). When Yanukovych, who after won the presidency in 2010, backed away from signing an association agreement with the European Union (Eu) in 2014, the Maidan street protests forced him to flee to Russia every bit a pro-Western coalition took power. Weeks subsequently, Russia annexed Crimea while pro-Russian rebels launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, a sometime role player and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected the nation'due south new president.

In a televised address on February 21, 2022, Russian President Putin falsely claimed that Ukraine never had stable statehood and said the country was instead part of Russia's "own history, culture, spiritual space." Days later, Russia attacked Ukraine in the largest European military operation since World War 2.

"From the Orange Revolution to the Maidan to the Ukrainian people's extraordinary resolve to defend their nation against Russia's armed forces invasion, what we have seen is a sovereign people charting its ain path confronting the properties of a complex Soviet legacy," O'Keeffe says. "This is 1 of the reasons why Putin has been so obsessed, alarmed and repulsed by modern Ukraine as an independent nation-state on the other side of Russian federation's border."

Belarus

Soviet vestiges such as the KGB and a highly centralized economy have endured in post-independence Belarus. The land's only mail service-Soviet president, Alexander Lukashenko, consolidated near-absolute power through a repressive regime that has allegedly rigged elections, jailed political opponents and silenced the press. A founding republic of the USSR, Republic of belarus has resisted privatization and maintains close ties with Russia.

Moldova

The Moldavian SSR joined the Soviet Union in 1940 after the USSR annexed it following its undercover 1939 non-assailment pact with Nazi Germany. After independence, pro-Russian and pro-EU politicians have vied for command of Moldova. While political turmoil and endemic abuse have kept Moldova amongst Europe's poorest countries, it has moved cautiously toward market capitalism and full EU membership.

Republic of kazakhstan

Under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, the Kazakh SSR, which became a democracy in 1936, was colonized with Slavic settlers who farmed wheat on its grasslands and became the epicenter of the country'south space program. Following independence, Kazakhstan privatized its economy, which grew tenfold in two decades due to oil reserves larger than those of any old Soviet commonwealth except Russia.

Roll to Keep

Proclaimed the "father of the nation," Nursultan Nazarbayev held the presidency for well-nigh 30 years. In addition to suppressing political opposition, the autocrat revived Kazakh culture and engineered construction of a new national capital, now named in his honor. Kazakhstan maintains stiff relations with both the W and Russia, which it called upon to help quell mass protests in 2022 over liquefied gas prices and widening inequality.

1919 Soviet propaganda fine art, found in the collection of the Russian State Library, Moscow.

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

As part of its undercover 1939 not-aggression pact with Nazi Federal republic of germany, the Soviet Union seized the independent Baltic states of Estonia, Republic of latvia and Lithuania and captivated them equally new republics in 1940. Post-obit a three-year occupation past the Nazis that left hundreds of thousands of citizens, most of them Jewish, dead, Baltic suffering continued after the USSR regained command in 1944. The Soviets banished hundreds of thousands of people from the Baltics to prison camps and agricultural collectives in Siberia and cardinal Asia while encouraging large-scale Russian immigration.

After the fall of Eastern European communist governments, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence in March 1990. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev instituted an economic blockade and deployed the Red Army in January 1991 merely could not quash the independence movement. Weeks after a failed coup by communist hard-liners in Moscow in August 1991, the Soviet Wedlock recognized the independence of the Baltics.

The Baltic states turned toward Western Europe every bit they transformed into stable democracies and embraced market capitalism. All 3 received full membership in the EU and NATO in 2004; Estonia adopted the euro as its currency in 2011, followed by Latvia in 2014 and Lithuania in 2015.

Central Asian Countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

The Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs joined the Soviet Union in 1925, followed past the Tajik SSR in 1929 and the Kirghiz SSR in 1936. Soviet leaders transformed the bulk-Muslim region through forced collectivization of agronomics, which produced devastating famines in 1930s, and the encouragement of Russian immigration.

Post-obit independence, strongmen take ruled these mountainous, energy-rich countries. Although economically dependent on Russia, the one-time republics permitted American and NATO forces to utilise their airspace and war machine facilities during the state of war in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Kyrgyz republic initially stood out as one of central Asia's near democratically oriented countries later the 1991 presidential election of Asakar Akayev, who consort liberal policies. As the country experienced a sharp economic turn down, however, Akayev grew increasingly disciplinarian until anti-abuse, pro-democracy protests forced him from power in the 2005 Tulip Revolution. Similar protests led Akayev'south successor to resign in 2010.

Following independence, a five-year civil state of war erupted in Tajikistan in 1992 between communists and an brotherhood of pro-Western democratic reformers and Islamists. Backed past Russian troops, electric current president Emomali Rahmon took power in November 1992 and has tightened control by suppressing political opponents and the printing. Beset by widespread abuse, the disciplinarian authorities is heavily dependent on Russia for economic assistance.

Fueled by large natural gas reserves that have attracted strange investment, Turkmenistan has been amid the almost repressive of the former Soviet republics. Communist Party dominate Saparmurat Niyazov maintained ability after the Soviet Matrimony'south collapse and perpetuated a cult of personality in which statues were erected in his likeness and days of the week and months of the year were renamed after himself and family members. Afterwards Niyazov's 2006 death, successor Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov maintained authoritarian rule.

In Uzbekistan, Communist Party leader Islam Karimov easily won the country's get-go presidential election and ruled Primal Asia's most populous land for a quarter-century until his 2016 death. Karimov's successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has continued to consolidate power and limit political opposition—while deepening ties with Russia.

Transcaucasian Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

After joining the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian SSR, Armenia, Republic of azerbaijan and Georgia became separate union republics in 1936. Soviet rule brought urbanization and industrialization to the formerly agronomical region.

As the Soviet state weakened in the tardily 1980s, tensions flared betwixt Armenia and Republic of azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an overwhelmingly Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. War between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out when Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence in 1991. An uneasy peace took effect after a 1994 cease-fire, although periodic outbreaks of violence accept notwithstanding occurred, including a six-calendar week war in the autumn of 2020.

Since independence, soaring oil acquirement and contracts with Western petrochemical companies have brought prosperity—and corruption—to Azerbaijan. While quondam Communist Political party leader Heydar Aliyev and his son, Ilham, have been Azerbaijan'due south sole leaders since 1993, Armenia has experienced more than political turbulence, including the assassination of its prime minister inside the parliament in 1999.

Georgia became the starting time Soviet democracy to agree a democratic election in 1991 when Soviet dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia won the presidency. His tenure was brief, still, and a military insurrection brought former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze to power in 1992. Widespread corruption and economical instability led to the peaceable Rose Revolution in 2003 that drove Shevardnadze from ability.

Secessionist movements in the indigenous Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia take led to tense relations with Russia. After Russian forces crossed the border to bring together separatist fighters in Due south Ossetia in a brief state of war in August 2008, Georgia turned increasingly to the Westward and signed an clan agreement with the Eu in 2014.

READ MORE: Was the Soviet Union's Collapse Inevitable?

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