12.2 The Formation of the Soviet Union

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the Soviet Union’s early years and the structure of its government
• Analyze the effects of Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan on the Soviet economy
• Describe life in the Soviet Union under Stalin

Russia underwent massive political upheaval during the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. A bloody civil war was fought for the next three years before the Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin were victorious. Russia was then reorganized as the Soviet Union in the early 1920s. Lenin’s early death created an opening exploited by Joseph Stalin, an autocrat who reshaped the “worker’s paradise” of the Soviet Union to bring it fully under his authoritarian control.