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A poll conducted by YouGov in 2015 found that only 11% of Americans, 15% of French, 15% of Britons, and 27% of Germans believed that the Soviet Union contributed most to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. In contrast, the survey conducted in May 1945 found that 57% of the French public believed the Soviet Union contributed most.
The official position of Russia, which chose in 1991 to be the legal and direct successor of the USSR, [128] is that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined the Soviet Union freely and of their own accord in 1940, and, with the dissolution of the USSR, these countries became newly created entities in 1991. Russia's stance is based upon the desire ...
Soviet occupation zone of Germany was the area of eastern Germany occupied by the Soviet Union from 1945 on. In 1949 it became The German Democratic Republic known in English as East Germany. In 1955 the Republic was declared by the Soviet Union to be fully sovereign; however, Soviet troops remained, based on the four-power Potsdam agreement.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [u] (USSR), [v] commonly known as the Soviet Union, [w] was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area , extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries , and the third-most populous country .
Some territories that had been lost by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) were annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II: the Baltic states and eastern portions of interwar Poland. The Russian SFSR also gained the northern half of East Prussia (Kaliningrad Oblast) from Germany.
The history of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, referred to as the Brezhnev Era, covers the period of Leonid Brezhnev's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation.
The Soviet Union also controlled two states post-war due to their involvement in World War II: East Germany and the Azerbaijan People's Government However these states were gained as a result of fighting during the war and were not themselves directly involved in the conflict; as a result, they are not included in this list.
It became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) following the creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin , General Secretary of the CPSU , became the leader of the USSR , being general secretary from the early 1930s to his death in 1953.