Soviet Union

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union comprising fifteen top-level republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were built on a highly centralized model until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with Moscow as the capital. Other major cities included Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, Alma-Ata and Novosibirsk. The Soviet Union was the largest country in the world by land area, covering over 22,402,200 square kilometres and spanning eleven time zones. The Soviet Union traces its origin to the 1917 October Revolution which saw the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin topple the Provisional Government and establish the RSFSR, the world's first constitutionally socialist state.

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Luna 15: The Soviet Union’s Last Gamble to Upstage Apollo

The ‘Hurtful’ Idea of Scientific Merit: Ideology now dominates research in the U.S. more pervasively than it did at the Soviet Union’s height

Remembering That Time the Soviet Union Shot a Top-Secret Space Cannon While in Orbit.

50 years ago, the United States and Soviet Union joined forces for science

Soviet Union: History, leaders and legacy

Venera timeline: The Soviet Union's Venus missions in pictures

Cosmism: Russia's religion for the rocket age. Nikolai Fyodorov's beliefs in a cosmic religion centred on life off Earth helped inspire some of the Soviet Union's most brilliant engineers.

Race to the Moon: A Look at the Space Race a Decade Before Apollo 11. In 1959, Popular Mechanics reported on a steadily growing space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. At the time, things were not looking good for NASA.