After the Soviet Union Collapsed How Many Countries Used Their Native Language Again

Founded in 1922 equally a confederation of Russian federation, Republic of belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia (comprised of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) eventually grew to 15 republics—and a world-wide superpower. Well-nigh 130 ethnic groups populated the vast country, which spanned eleven time zones.

According to Brigid O'Keeffe, professor of history at Brooklyn Higher, fears of nationalist revolts by non-Russians led the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet Union to guarantee the correct to national territories, native-language schools and cultural organizations while using those institutions to saturate the population with socialist values and practices. "In many ways, the Bolsheviks' nationality policy worked every bit intended—in the sense that it helped to integrate non-Russian peoples into the evolving Soviet state, guild, economic system and culture," she says. "But it also relentlessly demanded that Soviet people recall virtually themselves in national terms, and it placed ethnicity at the middle of Soviet politics."

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

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

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Here's what happened to the 15 republics in the decades later on the USSR'due south disintegration.

Russia

After the Soviet Spousal relationship dissolved, its preeminent republic endured political dysfunction and struggled to privatize its fundamental control economy. While oligarchs accumulated great wealth, most Russians faced high inflation and supply shortages. A year later Russia President Boris Yeltsin ended a 1993 ramble crisis past ordering the army to shell the state's legislative building, he launched a disastrous war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

Following a cease-fire in 1997, Yeltsin'south authorities ordered a second invasion of Chechnya in 1999 after Russian government asserted that bombings in Moscow and other cities were linked to Chechen militants. So-Prime Government minister Vladimir Putin led the military machine response against Chechnya.

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

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Ukraine

Once known equally Europe's tummy for its plentiful wheat fields, Ukraine deemed for a quarter of the USSR's agricultural production. Since independence, the country'south politics take lurched between pro-Russian and pro-European governments. In 1994 Ukraine became the get-go one-time Soviet republic to peaceably transfer power through an election, and information technology transitioned toward capitalism over the next decade.

After pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych declared victory in a presidential election beset past fraud in 2004, the peaceful Orangish Revolution forced a new vote that was won past pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who sought membership in the N Atlantic Treaty System (NATO). When Yanukovych, who subsequently 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 later, Russian federation annexed Crimea while pro-Russian rebels launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, a sometime actor 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 Russian federation's "ain history, civilisation, spiritual space." Days later, Russia attacked Ukraine in the largest European armed services operation since World War II.

"From the Orange Revolution to the Maidan to the Ukrainian people's boggling resolve to defend their nation confronting Russia'southward armed forces invasion, what we have seen is a sovereign people charting its ain path against the backdrop of a complex Soviet legacy," O'Keeffe says. "This is ane of the reasons why Putin has been then obsessed, alarmed and repulsed by mod Ukraine as an contained nation-state on the other side of Russia'due south border."

Belarus

Soviet vestiges such equally the KGB and a highly centralized economy take endured in mail service-independence Republic of belarus. The country'due south only post-Soviet president, Alexander Lukashenko, consolidated near-absolute power through a repressive regime that has allegedly rigged elections, jailed political opponents and silenced the printing. A founding commonwealth of the USSR, Republic of belarus has resisted privatization and maintains shut ties with Russia.

Moldova

The Moldavian SSR joined the Soviet Union in 1940 afterward the USSR annexed it following its clandestine 1939 non-assailment pact with Nazi Germany. Afterwards independence, pro-Russian and pro-Eu politicians accept vied for control of Moldova. While political turmoil and endemic corruption have kept Moldova among Europe's poorest countries, information technology has moved cautiously toward market commercialism and full EU membership.

Kazakhstan

Under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, the Kazakh SSR, which became a commonwealth in 1936, was colonized with Slavic settlers who farmed wheat on its grasslands and became the epicenter of the state's space program. Post-obit independence, Kazakhstan privatized its economy, which grew tenfold in 2 decades due to oil reserves larger than those of any erstwhile Soviet commonwealth except Russia.

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Proclaimed the "father of the nation," Nursultan Nazarbayev held the presidency for about thirty years. In addition to suppressing political opposition, the autocrat revived Kazakh culture and engineered construction of a new national upper-case letter, at present named in his honor. Kazakhstan maintains strong relations with both the West and Russia, which information technology called upon to help quell mass protests in 2022 over liquefied gas prices and widening inequality.

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

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The Baltic States: Republic of estonia, Latvia and Republic of lithuania

Every bit part of its secret 1939 not-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Marriage seized the independent Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and absorbed them every bit new republics in 1940. Following a three-year occupation by the Nazis that left hundreds of thousands of citizens, most of them Jewish, expressionless, Baltic suffering connected after the USSR regained command in 1944. The Soviets banished hundreds of thousands of people from the Baltics to prison house camps and agricultural collectives in Siberia and cardinal Asia while encouraging large-scale Russian immigration.

Later 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 occludent and deployed the Cherry Army in January 1991 but could not quash the independence move. Weeks after a failed insurrection by communist hard-liners in Moscow in August 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltics.

The Baltic states turned toward Western Europe as they transformed into stable democracies and embraced market capitalism. All iii received full membership in the European union and NATO in 2004; Republic of estonia adopted the euro as its currency in 2011, followed by Latvia in 2014 and Republic of 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 majority-Muslim region through forced collectivization of agriculture, which produced devastating famines in 1930s, and the encouragement of Russian clearing.

Following independence, strongmen have ruled these mountainous, free energy-rich countries. Although economically dependent on Russian federation, the old republics permitted American and NATO forces to use their airspace and military facilities during the war in Afghanistan post-obit the September xi, 2001, attacks.

Kyrgyz republic initially stood out as one of central Asia'south most democratically oriented countries later the 1991 presidential election of Asakar Akayev, who consort liberal policies. As the country experienced a sharp economical refuse, even so, Akayev grew increasingly authoritarian 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 v-yr civil state of war erupted in Tajikistan in 1992 between communists and an alliance of pro-Western democratic reformers and Islamists. Backed by Russian troops, current president Emomali Rahmon took ability in November 1992 and has tightened control by suppressing political opponents and the press. Aggress by widespread corruption, the authoritarian regime is heavily dependent on Russia for economic aid.

Fueled by large natural gas reserves that have attracted strange investment, Turkmenistan has been among the most repressive of the former Soviet republics. Communist Party boss Saparmurat Niyazov maintained power subsequently the Soviet Union's 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 afterward himself and family members. Afterwards Niyazov'south 2006 death, successor Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov maintained authoritarian rule.

In Uzbekistan, Communist Party leader Islam Karimov easily won the country'due south get-go presidential election and ruled Central Asia'due south virtually populous state for a quarter-century until his 2016 death. Karimov'southward successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has connected to consolidate power and limit political opposition—while deepening ties with Russia.

Transcaucasian Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

Subsequently joining the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian SSR, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia became split union republics in 1936. Soviet rule brought urbanization and industrialization to the formerly agricultural region.

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

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

Georgia became the first Soviet commonwealth to hold a democratic ballot in 1991 when Soviet dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia won the presidency. His tenure was brief, however, and a military coup brought former Soviet strange government minister Eduard Shevardnadze to ability in 1992. Widespread corruption and economic instability led to the peaceable Rose Revolution in 2003 that drove Shevardnadze from ability.

Secessionist movements in the ethnic Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have led to tense relations with Russia. After Russian forces crossed the border to join separatist fighters in South Ossetia in a brief war in August 2008, Georgia turned increasingly to the West and signed an association agreement with the European union in 2014.

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