Soviet empire

The term "Soviet empire" collectively refers to the world's territories that the Soviet Union dominated politically, economically, and militarily. This phenomenon, particularly in the context of the Cold War, is used by Sovietologists to describe the extent of the Soviet Union's hegemony over the Second World.

In a wider sense, the term refers to Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War, which has been characterized as imperialist: the nations which were part of the "Soviet empire" were nominally independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies, but those policies had to stay within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union. These limits were enforced by the threat of intervention by Soviet forces, and later the Warsaw Pact. Major military interventions took place in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980–81 and Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Countries in the Eastern Bloc were Soviet satellite states.

Although the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor, and declared itself anti-imperialist and a people's democracy, it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. The notion of "Soviet empire" often refers to a form of "classic" or "colonial" empire with communism only replacing conventional imperial ideologies such as Christianity or monarchy, rather than creating a revolutionary state. Academically the idea is seen as emerging with Richard Pipes' 1957 book The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923; it has been reinforced, along with several other views, in continuing scholarship. Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. The Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers.

The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia. For example, the state's prioritized grain production over livestock in Kyrgyzstan, which favored Slavic settlers over the Kyrgyz natives, thus perpetuating the inequalities of the tsarist colonial era. The Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade, or social imperialism. While Maoists criticized post-Stalin USSR's imperialism from a hardline communist viewpoint, reformist socialist critics of Soviet imperialism, such as Josip Broz Tito and Milovan Djilas, have referred the Stalinist USSR's foreign policies, such as the occupation and economic exploitations of Eastern Europe and its aggressive and hostile policy towards Yugoslavia as Soviet imperialism. Another dimension of Soviet imperialism is cultural imperialism, the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions. Leonid Brezhnev continued a policy of cultural Russification as part of Developed Socialism, which sought to assert more central control. Seweryn Bialer argued that the Soviet state had an imperial nationalism.

A notable wave of Sovietization occurred during the Russian Civil War in the territories captured by the Red Army. Later, the territories occupied by the Russian SFSR and the USSR were Sovietized. Mongolia was invaded by the Soviet Union and Sovietized in the 1920s after it became a Soviet satellite state, and after the end of the Second World War, Sovietization took place in the countries of the Soviet Bloc (Eastern and Central Europe: Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states etc.). In a broad sense, it included the involuntary creation of Soviet-style authorities, imitation of elections held under the control of the Bolsheviks with the removal of opposition candidates, nationalization of land and property, repression against representatives of "class enemies" (kulaks, or osadniks, for instance). Mass executions and imprisoning in Gulag labor camps and exile settlements often accompany that process. This was usually promoted and sped up by propaganda aimed at creating a common way of life in all states within the Soviet sphere of influence. In modern history, Sovietization refers to the copying of models of Soviet life (the cult of the leader's personality, collectivist ideology, mandatory participation in propaganda activities, etc.).

From the 1930s through the 1950s, Joseph Stalin ordered population transfers in the Soviet Union, deporting people (often entire nationalities) to underpopulated remote areas, with their place being taken mostly by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. The policy officially ended in the Khrushchev era, with some of the nationalities allowed to return in 1957. However, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev refused the right of return for Crimean Tatars, Russian Germans and Meskhetian Turks. In 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Russia declared the Stalinist mass deportations to be a "policy of defamation and genocide".

The historical relationship between Russia (the dominant republic in the Soviet Union) and these Eastern European countries helps explain their longing to eradicate the remnants of Soviet culture. Poland and the Baltic states epitomize the Soviet attempt to build uniform cultures and political systems. According to Dag Noren, Russia was seeking to constitute and reinforce a buffer zone between itself and Western Europe so as to protect itself from potential future attacks from hostile Western European countries. The Soviet Union had lost approximately 20 million people over the course of the Second World War, although Russian sources are keen on further inflating that figure. To prevent a recurrence of such costly warfare, Soviet leaders believed that they needed to establish a hierarchy of political and economic dependence between neighboring states and the USSR.

During the Brezhnev era, the policy of "Developed Socialism" declared the Soviet Union to be the most complete socialist country—other countries were "socialist", but the USSR was "developed socialist"—explaining its dominant role and hegemony over the other socialist countries. This and the interventionist Brezhnev Doctrine, permitting the invasion of other socialist countries, led to characterisation of the USSR as an empire.