The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union
Who sponsored the Bolsheviks and why, who gained, and why the Union fell, as each side told it
Textbooks often tell the Soviet story as a revolution from below in 1917 and a sudden collapse in 1991. The records show more hands at work. This chapter follows who helped the Bolsheviks to power and what they wanted in return, then the accounts of why the Union fell, side by side.
Lines marked “according to” are one side’s account. Where records from opposing sides agree, the link is shown as confirmed by both.
15 Mar 1917
March 1917, the third year of the World War. A revolt in Petrograd ends the monarchy, and a Provisional Government promises to keep Russia fighting Germany. In Zurich, the exiled Bolshevik leader Lenin wants Russia out of the war. So does the German government.
16 Apr 1917
The sealed train. In April 1917 Germany let Lenin and about thirty exiles cross its territory to Sweden and on to Petrograd. Both sides recorded the deal: Lenin’s group said a Swiss socialist negotiated it with the German ambassador; the German files show the General Staff approving it. A German report soon noted that Lenin was “working exactly as we would wish.”
The money. The German Foreign Ministry’s own files, published in 1958, show it authorizing one million roubles for the go-between Alexander Parvus in 1915, and its State Secretary later crediting German funds for building up Pravda. In July 1917 the Provisional Government accused Lenin of being sent by Germany. How much money flowed, and how decisive it was, historians still debate.
A contested thesis. According to Antony Sutton, Wall Street money helped the Bolsheviks too, for example $1 million from the Red Cross mission leader William Boyce Thompson. US embassy records from December 1917 point the other way, to American money for anti-Bolshevik newspapers. Both are shown with their sources; Sutton’s claim is marked disputed, the embassy reading is still a draft.
7 Nov 1917
Power. On 7 November 1917 the Bolsheviks, through the Petrograd Soviet chaired by Trotsky, deposed the Provisional Government. Lenin headed the new government and promised immediate peace.
3 Mar 1918
Who gained. At Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 Soviet Russia gave up its western lands. The Soviet congress that ratified it called the terms “imposed on us as an ultimatum and with undisguised violence”. According to Ludendorff, Germany’s war chief, sending Lenin was militarily justified “for Russia had to be laid low”, and the peace eased the Eastern Front “to an extraordinary degree”.
30 Dec 1922
The Union. On 30 December 1922 Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian republic founded the USSR; Stalin presented the treaty. Article 26 let any republic leave. Nobody could use it for 69 years.
26 Apr 1986
The strains. From 1985 Gorbachev launched perestroika and glasnost. Oil prices collapsed from late 1985, Chernobyl exploded in April 1986, the last troops left Afghanistan in February 1989, and in November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell; according to Washington, Gorbachev’s loosening of Eastern Europe set that in motion.
8 Dec 1991
Who ended it. Yeltsin beat back the hard-liners’ coup in August 1991. On 8 December, in a Belarusian forest, Yeltsin, Kravchuk of Ukraine and Shushkevich of Belarus declared the USSR finished. US records and Gorbachev’s own resignation speech both tie the accords to the end, so that link is confirmed by both sides.
Why it fell, by whom you ask. Washington, Gorbachev and Shushkevich: the August coup. Gorbachev in 2006: Chernobyl. Yegor Gaidar: the oil price collapse. Putin in 2022: Lenin’s right to secede. Historian Serhii Plokhy: Ukraine’s referendum. The Reagan Library credits SDI with ending the Cold War, a view others dispute. Bush said America won it; Putin called the collapse a disaster for Russians.
Explore further: switch the perspective between the US, Soviet and Russian governments to compare which causes each one names, or open the explorer and trace a route from Lenin to Putin.