A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist.
They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwatches became popular after World War I during which a transitional design, trench watches, were used by the military. Pocket watches generally have an attached chain to allow them to be secured to a waistcoat, lapel, or belt loop, and to prevent them from being dropped. Watches were also mounted on a short leather strap or fob, when a long chain would have been cumbersome or likely to catch on things. This fob could also provide a protective flap over their face and crystal. Women's watches were normally of this form, with a watch fob that was more decorative than protective. Chains were frequently decorated with a silver or enamel pendant, often carrying the arms of some club or society, which by association also became known as a fob. Ostensibly practical gadgets such as a watch winding key, vesta case, or a cigar cutter also appeared on watch chains, although usually in an overly decorated style. Also common are fasteners designed to be put through a buttonhole and worn in a jacket or waistcoat, this sort being frequently associated with and named after train conductors.
An early reference to the pocket watch is in a letter in November 1462 from the Italian clockmaker Bartholomew Manfredi to the Marchese di Mantova Federico Gonzaga,[citation needed] where he offers him a "pocket clock" better than that belonging to the Duke of Modena. By the end of the 15th century, spring-driven clocks appeared in Italy, and in Germany. Peter Henlein, a master locksmith of Nuremberg, was regularly manufacturing pocket watches by 1524. Thereafter, pocket watch manufacture spread throughout the rest of Europe as the 16th century progressed. Early watches only had an hour hand, the minute hand appearing in the late 17th century.[1][2] The first American pocket watches with machine made parts were manufactured by Henry Pitkin with his brother in the later 1830s.#
The first timepieces to be worn, made in 16th-century Europe, were transitional in size between clocks and watches.[3] These 'clock-watches' were fastened to clothing or worn on a chain around the neck. They were heavy drum shaped brass cylinders several inches in diameter, engraved and ornamented. They had only an hour hand. The face was not covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. The movement was made of iron or steel and held together with tapered pins and wedges, until screws began to be used after 1550. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The shape later evolved into a rounded form; these were later called Nuremberg eggs.[3] Still later in the century there was a trend for unusually shaped watches, and clock-watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls (Death's head watches) were made.
Styles changed in the 17th century and men began to wear watches in pockets instead of as pendants (the woman's watch remained a pendant into the 20th century).[4][5] This is said to have occurred in 1675 when Charles II of England introduced waistcoats.[6] To fit in pockets, their shape evolved into the typical pocket watch shape, rounded and flattened with no sharp edges. Glass was used to cover the face beginning around 1610. Watch fobs began to be used, the name originating from the German word fuppe, a small pocket.[5] The watch was wound and also set by opening the back and fitting a key to a square arbor, and turning it.
Until the second half of the 18th century, watches were luxury items; as an indication of how highly they were valued, English newspapers of the 18th century often include advertisements offering rewards of between one and five guineas merely for information that might lead to the recovery of stolen watches.[citation needed] By the end of the 18th century, however, watches (while still largely hand-made) were becoming more common; special cheap watches were made for sale to sailors, with crude but colorful paintings of maritime scenes on the dials.
Up to the 1720s, almost all watch movements were based on the verge escapement, which had been developed for large public clocks in the 14th century. This type of escapement involved a high degree of friction and did not include any kind of jewelling to protect the contacting surfaces from wear. As a result, a verge watch could rarely achieve any high standard of accuracy. (Surviving examples[citation needed] mostly run very fast, often gaining an hour a day or more.) The first widely used improvement was the cylinder escapement, developed by the Abbé de Hautefeuille early in the 18th century and applied by the English maker George Graham. Then, towards the end of the 18th century, the lever escapement (invented by Thomas Mudge in 1759) was put into limited production by a handful of makers including Josiah Emery (a Swiss based in London) and Abraham-Louis Breguet. With this, a domestic watch could keep time to within a minute a day. Lever watches became common after about 1820, and this type is still used in most mechanical watches today.
In 1857 the American Watch Company in Waltham, Massachusetts introduced the Waltham Model 57, the first to use interchangeable parts. This cut the cost of manufacture and repair. Most Model 57 pocket watches were in a coin silver ("one nine fine"), a 90% pure silver alloy commonly used in dollar coinage, slightly less pure than the British (92.5%) sterling silver, both of which avoided the higher purity of other types of silver to make circulating coins and other utilitarian silver objects last longer with heavy use.
Further information: American system of watch manufacturing
Case back showing hinges, Waltham model 57 American made
Case back inside, with hallmark of Waltham, a model 57
Watch manufacture was becoming streamlined; the Japy family of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, led the way in this, and soon afterwards the newborn American watch industry developed much new machinery, so that by 1865 the American Watch Company (afterwards known as Waltham) could turn out more than 50,000 reliable watches each year. This development drove the Swiss out of their dominating position at the cheaper end of the market, compelling them to raise the quality of their products and establish themselves as the leaders in precision and accuracy instead.
Use in railroading in the United States
Main article: Railroad chronometers
The rise of railroading during the last half of the 19th century led to the widespread use of pocket watches. A famous train wreck on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in Kipton, Ohio on April 19, 1891 occurred because one of the engineers' watches had stopped for four minutes. The railroad officials commissioned Webb C. Ball as their Chief Time Inspector, in order to establish precision standards and a reliable timepiece inspection system for Railroad chronometers. This led to the adoption in 1893 of stringent standards for pocket watches used in railroading. These railroad-grade pocket watches, as they became colloquially known, had to meet the General Railroad Timepiece Standards adopted in 1893 by almost all railroads. These standards read, in part:
...open faced, size 16 or 18, have a minimum of 17 jewels, adjusted to at least five positions, keep time accurately to within 30 seconds a week, adjusted to temps of 34 °F (1 °C) to 100 °F (38 °C), have a double roller, steel escape wheel, lever set, regulator, winding stem at 12 o'clock, and have bold black Arabic numerals on a white dial, with black hands.
Types of pocket watches
There are two main styles of pocket watch, the hunter-case pocket watch and the open-face pocket watch.
Open-face watches
An open-face pocket watch made by the Polish watchmaker Franciszek Czapek, ca. 1876.
An open-faced, or Lépine,[7] watch, is one in which the case lacks a metal cover to protect the crystal. It is typical for an open-faced watch to have the pendant located at 12:00 and the sub-second dial located at 6:00. Occasionally, a watch movement intended for a hunting case (with the winding stem at 3:00 and sub second dial at 6:00) will have an open-faced case. Such watch is known as a "sidewinder." Alternatively, such a watch movement may be fitted with a so-called conversion dial, which relocates the winding stem to 12:00 and the sub-second dial to 3:00. After 1908, watches approved for railroad service were required to be cased in open-faced cases with the winding stem at 12:00.
Hunter-case watches
A hunter-case pocket watch is a case with a spring-hinged circular metal lid or cover, that closes over the watch-dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris. The name originated from England where "fox hunting men found it convenient to be able to open their watch and read the time with one hand, while holding the reins of their 'hunter' (horse) in the other hand".[8] It is also known as a "savonnette", after the French word for soap (savon) due to its resemblance with a round soap bar.[8]
The majority of antique and vintage hunter-case watches have the lid-hinges at the 9 o'clock position and the stem, crown and bow of the watch at the 3 o'clock position. Modern hunter-case pocket watches usually have the hinges for the lid at the 6 o'clock position and the stem, crown and bow at the 12 o'clock position, as with open-face watches. In both styles of watch-cases, the sub-seconds dial was always at the 6 o'clock position. A hunter-case pocket watch with a spring-ring chain is pictured at the top of this page.
An intermediate type, known as the demi-hunter (or half-hunter), is a case style in which the outer lid has a glass panel or hole in the centre giving a view of the hands. The hours are marked, often in blue enamel, on the outer lid itself; thus with this type of case one can tell the time without opening the lid.
Types of watch movements
The parts of a pocket watch movement
Key-wind, key-set movements
The very first pocket watches, since their creation in the 16th century, up until the third quarter of the 19th century, had key-wind and key-set movements. A watch key was necessary to wind the watch and to set the time. This was usually done by opening the caseback and putting the key over the winding-arbor (which was set over the watch's winding-wheel, to wind the mainspring) or by putting the key onto the setting-arbor, which was connected with the minute-wheel and turned the hands. Some watches of this period had the setting-arbor at the front of the watch, so that removing the crystal and bezel was necessary to set the time. Watch keys are the origin of the class key, common paraphernalia for American high-school and university graduation.
Many keywind watch movements make use of a fusee, to improve isochronism. The fusee is a specially cut conical pulley attached by a fine chain to the mainspring barrel. When the spring is fully wound (and its torque the highest), the full length of the chain is wrapped around the fusee and the force of the mainspring is exerted on the smallest diameter portion of the fusee cone. As the spring unwinds and its torque decreases, the chain winds back onto the mainspring barrel and pulls on an increasingly larger diameter portion of the fusee. This provides a more uniform amount of torque on the watch train, and thus results in more consistent balance amplitude and better isochronism. A fusee is a practical necessity in watches using a verge escapement, and can also provide considerable benefit with a lever escapement and other high precision types of escapements (Hamiltons WWII era Model 21 chronometer used a fusee in combination with a detent escapement).
Keywind watches are also commonly seen with conventional going barrels and other types of mainspring barrels, particularly in American watchmaking.[citation needed]
Stem-wind, stem-set movements
The ca. 1950 Omega pocket watch is of stem-wind, stem-set movement.
Invented by Adrien Philippe in 1842 and commercialized by Patek Philippe & Co. in the 1850s, the stem-wind, stem-set movement did away with the watch key which was a necessity for the operation of any pocket watch up to that point. The first stem-wind and stem-set pocket watches were sold during the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the first owners of these new kinds of watches were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Stem-wind, stem-set movements are the most common type of watch-movement found in both vintage and modern pocket watches.
The mainstream transition to the use of stem-wind, stem-set watches occurred at around the same time as the end of the manufacture and use of the fusee watch. Fusee chain-driven timing was replaced with a mainspring of better quality spring steel (commonly known as the "going barrel") allowing for a more even release of power to the escape mechanism. However the reader of this article should not be misled to think that the winding and setting functions are directly related to the balance wheel and balance spring. The balance wheel and balance spring provide a separate function: to regulate the timing (or escape) of the movement.[citation needed][9]
Stem-wind, lever-set movements
Mandatory for all railroad watches after roughly 1908, this kind of pocket watch was set by opening the crystal and bezel and pulling out the setting-lever (most hunter-cases have levers accessible without removing the crystal or bezel), which was generally found at either the 10 or 2 o'clock positions on open-faced watches, and at 5:00 on hunting cased watches. Once the lever was pulled out, the crown could be turned to set the time. The lever was then pushed back in and the crystal and bezel were closed over the dial again. This method of time setting on pocket watches was preferred by American and Canadian railroads, as lever setting watches make accidental time changes impossible. After 1908, lever setting was generally required for new watches entering service on American railroads.[citation needed]
Stem-wind, pin-set movements
Much like the lever-set movements, these pocket watches had a small pin or knob next to the watch-stem that had to be depressed before turning the crown to set the time and releasing the pin when the correct time had been set. This style of watch is occasionally referred to as "nail set", as the set button must be pressed using a finger.[citation needed]
Jeweled movements
For more information, see Mechanical watch
Watches of any quality will be jeweled. A jewel in a mechanical watch is a small, shaped piece of a hard mineral. Ruby and sapphire are most common. Diamond, garnet, and glass are also seen. Starting in the early 20th century, synthetic jewels were almost universally used. Before that time, low grade natural jewels which were unsuitable as gemstones were used. In either case, the jewels have virtually no monetary value.
The most common types of jewels are hole jewels. Hole jewels are disks (normally flying saucer shaped) which have a carefully shaped and sized hole. The pivot of an arbor rides in this hole. The jewel provides an extremely smooth and hard surface which is very wear resistant, and when properly lubricated, very low friction. Thus, hole jewels reduce both friction and wear on the moving parts of a watch.
The other basic jewel types are cap jewels, roller jewels, and pallet jewels.
Cap jewels are always paired with hole jewels, and always with a conically shaped pivot. The cap jewels are so called because they "cap" the hole jewels and control the axial movement of the arbor, preventing the shoulder of the pivot contacting the hole jewel. For a properly designed hole and cap jewel system, the arbor pivot bears on the cap jewel as a pin point on a thin film of oil. Thus, a hole and cap jewel offer lower friction and better performance across different positions compared with simply a hole jewel.
The roller jewel, also called the impulse jewel or simply impulse pin, is a thin rod of ruby or sapphire, usually in the shape of a letter "D". The roller jewel is responsible for coupling the motion of the balance wheel to that of the pallet fork.
Pallet jewels are on the pallet fork and interact with the escape wheel. They are the surfaces which, 5 times a second in a typical escapement, lock the gear train of the watch and then transfer power to the balance wheel.
A jeweled watch with a lever escapement should contain at least 7 jewels. The seven jewels are; 2 hole jewels and 2 cap jewels for the pivots of the balance wheel staff (arbor), 1 impulse (roller) jewel, and 2 pallet jewels.
More highly jeweled watches add jewels to other pivots, starting with the pallet fork, then the escape wheel, fourth wheel, third wheel, then finally the center wheel. Jeweling like this to the third wheel adds eight jewels, giving 15 jewels in total. Jeweling to the center wheel adds two more giving 17 jewels in total. Thus, a 17 jewel watch is considered to be fully jeweled.
With American makers, however, it was common on low-end movements to jewel to the third wheel on only the top (visible) plate of the watch. This gives a total of 11 jewels, but looks identical to a 15 jewel watch unless the dial is removed. Since watches with 15 jewels and less are often not marked as to the jewel count, extreme caution must be exercised when purchasing movements which appear to be 15 jewels.
Additional jewels beyond 17 are used to either add cap jewels, or to jewel the mainspring barrel of the watch. Watches with 19 jewels, particularly those made by Elgin and Waltham, will often have a jeweled mainspring barrel. Alternatively a 19 jewel watch will have additional cap jewels on the escape wheel. 21 jewel watches commonly have cap jewels on both the pallet fork and escape wheel. 23 jewel watches will have a jeweled barrel and fully capped escapement. The timekeeping value of jewels beyond 17 for a time-only movement is often debated.
Complicated movements will often have additional jewels which do serve useful purposes.
Greater jewel counts are often associated with better quality watch movements. While it is true that expensive movements often have higher jewel counts, the jewels themselves are not the reason for this. The jewels themselves add essentially no monetary value, and beyond 17 offer a negligible improvement in timekeeping ability and in movement life. Most of the cost of a more expensive watch is associated with better quality finishing and, more importantly, with a greater number of adjustments.
Adjusted movements
A pocket watch with an attached compass.
Pocket watch movements are occasionally engraved with the word "Adjusted", or "Adjusted to n positions". This means that the watch has been tuned to keep time under various positions and conditions. There are eight possible adjustments:
Waltham model 1899 pocket watch movement.
Waltham model 1899 pocket watch face
Dial up.
Dial down.
Pendant up.
Pendant down.
Pendant left.
Pendant right.
Temperature (from 34–100 degrees Fahrenheit).
Isochronism (the ability of the watch to keep time, regardless of the mainspring's level of tension).
Positional adjustments are attained by careful poising (ensuring even weight distribution) of the balance-hairspring system as well as careful control of the shape and polish on the balance pivots. All of this achieves an equalization of the effect of gravity on the watch in various positions. Positional adjustments are achieved through careful adjustment of each of these factors, provided by repeated trials on a timing machine. Thus, adjusting a watch to position requires many hours of labor, increasing the cost of the watch. Medium grade watches were commonly adjusted to 3 positions (dial up, dial down, pendant up) while high grade watches were commonly adjusted to 5 positions (dial up, dial down, stem up, stem left, stem right) or even all 6 positions. Railroad watches were required, after 1908, to be adjusted to 5 positions. 3 positions were the general requirement before that time.
Early watches used a solid steel balance. As temperature increased, the solid balance expanded in size, changing the moment of inertia and changing the timing of the watch. In addition, the hairspring would lengthen, decreasing its spring constant. This problem was initially solved through the use of the compensation balance. The compensation balance consisted of a ring of steel sandwiched to a ring of brass. These rings were then split in two places. The balance would, at least theoretically, actually decrease in size with heating to compensate for the lengthening of the hairspring. Through careful adjustment of the placement of the balance screws (brass or gold screws placed in the rim of the balance), a watch could be adjusted to keep time the same at both hot (100 °F) and cold (32°) temperatures. Unfortunately, a watch so adjusted would run slow at temperatures between these two. The problem was completely solved through the use of special alloys for the balance and hairspring which were essentially immune to thermal expansion. Such an alloy is used in Hamilton's 992E and 992B.
Isochronism was occasionally improved through the use of a stopworks, a system designed to only allow the mainspring to operate within its center (most consistent) range. The most common method of achieving isochronism is through the use of the Breguet overcoil. which places part of the outermost turn of the hairspring in a different plane from the rest of the spring. This allows the hairspring to "breathe" more evenly and symmetrically. Two types of overcoils are found - the gradual overcoil and the Z-Bend. The gradual overcoil is obtained by imposing a two gradual twists to the hairspring, forming the rise to the second plane over half the circumference; and the Z-bend does this by imposing two kinks of complementary 45 degree angles, accomplishing a rise to the second plane in about three spring section heights. The second method is done for esthetic reasons and is much more difficult to perform. Due to the difficulty with forming an overcoil, modern watches often use a slightly less effective "dogleg", which uses a series of sharp bends (in plane) to place part of the outermost coil out of the way of the rest of the spring.
Decline in popularity
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Mobile phone in a coin pocket
Colibri pocket watch, manufactured mid-1990s. The back case has an extra hinged cover that can be folded out to allow the watch to stand upright on a table.
Pocket watches are not common in modern times, having been superseded by wristwatches. Up until the start of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and the wristwatch was considered feminine and unmanly. In men's fashions, pocket watches began to be superseded by wristwatches around the time of World War I, when officers in the field began to appreciate that a watch worn on the wrist was more easily accessed than one kept in a pocket. A watch of transitional design, combining features of pocket watches and modern wristwatches, was called trench watch or "wristlet". However, pocket watches continued to be widely used in railroading even as their popularity declined elsewhere.
The use of pocket watches in a professional environment came to an ultimate end in approximately 1943.[citation needed] The Royal Navy of the British military distributed to their sailors Waltham pocket watches, which were 9 jewel movements, with black dials, and numbers coated with radium for visibility in the dark, in anticipation of the eventual D-Day invasion.[citation needed] The same Walthams were ordered by the Canadian military as well. Hanhart was a brand which was used by the Germans,[citation needed] although the German U-Boat captains (and their allied counterparts) were more likely to use stopwatches for timing torpedo runs.[citation needed]
For a few years in the late 1970s and 1980s three-piece suits for men returned to fashion, and this led to small resurgence in pocket watches, as some men actually used the vest pocket for its original purpose.[citation needed] Since then, some watch companies continue to make pocket watches. As vests have long since fallen out of fashion (in the US) as part of formal business wear, the only available location for carrying a watch is in a trouser pocket. The more recent advent of mobile phones and other gadgets that are worn on the waist has diminished the appeal of carrying an additional item in the same location, especially as such pocketable gadgets usually have timekeeping functionality themselves.
In some countries a gift of a gold-cased pocket watch is traditionally awarded to an employee upon their retirement.[10]
The pocketwatch has regained popularity due to steampunk, a subcultural movement embracing the arts and fashions of the Victorian era, where pocketwatches were nearly ubiquitous.[11]
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Location of Russia (green) Russian-administered Crimea (disputed; light green)a
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The Crimean Peninsula is recognized as territory of Ukraine by a majority of UN member nations, but is de facto administered by Russia.[11]
The Belavezha Accords was signed in Brest, Belarus on December 8, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States in which the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR ratified the accords on December 12, denouncing the 1922 treaty. On December 25, Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation and the following the day on December 26, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union ratified the accords, effectively dissolving the Soviet Union.
Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya, IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə]), also officially known as the Russian Federation[12] (Russian: Росси́йская Федерaция, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə]), is a sovereign country in Eurasia.[13] At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi),[14] Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area,[15][16][17] and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of December 2017.[6] About 77% of the population live in the western, European part of the country. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod.
Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.[18] Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire,[19] beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.[19] Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century.[20] The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.[21][22]
Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state.[23] The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II,[24][25] and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[26][27][28] Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and sole successor state of the Soviet Union.[29] It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.
The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015.[30] Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world,[31] making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally.[32][33] The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[34] Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
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Special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, participates as "Hong Kong, China" and "Macao China". Officially the Republic of China, participates as "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu", and "Chinese Taipei" in short.
he Soviet Union (Russian: Сове́тский Сою́з, tr. Sovétsky Soyúz, IPA: [sɐˈvʲɛt͡skʲɪj sɐˈjus] (About this sound listen)), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyúz Sovétskikh Sotsialistícheskikh Respúblik, IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲɛtskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪsˈtʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪˈspublʲɪk] (About this sound listen)), abbreviated as the USSR (Russian: СССР, tr. SSSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics,[a] its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent and Novosibirsk. The Soviet Union was one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[7] It was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Warsaw Pact.
The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, after a civil war, the Soviet Union was formed with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Union transitioned from a market economy into a centrally planned economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. As industrial production skyrocketed, the Soviet Union achieved full employment, implemented a universal healthcare system, sharply reduced illiteracy, and provided guarantees of paid vacations, rest homes, and recreational clubs. This period of industrialization was a time of enormous improvements in the standard of living for millions of people in the country, starkly contrasting with the situations of other countries during the Great Depression, but was also a time characterized by major institutional shortcomings and failures. In the 1930s, with the rise of fascism in Europe, the Communist Party pursued aggressive campaigns to suppress potential counter-revolution, fermenting political paranoia which culminated in the Great Purge in which extrajudicial arrests and executions of suspected counter-revolutionaries led to an estimated 600,000 deaths. As a result of these mass arrests, penal labor through the Gulag system was used to construct infrastructure projects, though this consistently proved to be an inefficient system throughout its existence.[8] Increased demand for agricultural products to pay for industrialization combined with a relatively low harvest yield led to the famine of 1932–33 in which an estimated 2.4 to 4 million people died in the country's agricultural centers of Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan.[9][10]
After the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, Stalin tried repeatedly to form an anti-fascist alliance with other European countries. However, finding no support, shortly before World War II, the Soviet Union became the last major country to sign a treaty with Germany with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, after which the two countries invaded Poland in September 1939. In June 1941, the pact collapsed as Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk. The territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union; the postwar division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the West, led by the United States.
The Cold War emerged by 1947, as the Eastern Bloc, united under the Warsaw Pact in 1955, confronted the Western Bloc, united under NATO in 1949. On 5 March 1953, Stalin died and was quickly succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the De-Stalinization of Soviet society through the Khrushchev Thaw. The Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race, with the first artificial satellite and the first human spaceflight. Khrushchev was removed from power by his colleagues in 1964 and was succeeded as head of state by Leonid Brezhnev. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost (government transparency) and perestroika (openness, restructuring). Under Gorbachev, the role of the Communist Party in governing the state was removed from the constitution, causing a surge of severe political instability to set in. The Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments.
With the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the union republics, Gorbachev tried to avert a dissolution of the Soviet Union in the post-Cold War era. A March 1991 referendum, boycotted by some republics, resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation. Gorbachev's power was greatly diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin played a high-profile role in facing down an abortive August 1991 coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognized as the successor state of the Soviet Union.[11][12][13] In summing up the international ramifications of these events, Vladislav Zubok stated: "The collapse of the Soviet empire was an event of epochal geopolitical, military, ideological and economic significance.
Soviet Union topics
History
Index of Soviet Union-related articles Russian Revolution February October Russian Civil War Russian SFSR USSR creation treaty New Economic Policy Stalinism Great Purge Great Patriotic War (World War II) Cold War Khrushchev Thaw 1965 reform Stagnation Perestroika Glasnost Revolutions of 1989 Dissolution Nostalgia Post-Soviet states
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Administrative division of the Soviet Union
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Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)
Principal
Armenia Azerbaijan Byelorussia Estonia1 Georgia Kazakhstan Kirghizia Latvia1 Lithuania1 Moldavia Russian SFSR Tajikistan Turkmenia Ukraine Uzbekistan
State Emblem of the Soviet Union
Short-lived
Karelo-Finnish SSR (1940–1956) Transcaucasian SFSR (1922–1936)
Non-union republics
SSR Abkhazia (1921–1931) Bukharan SSR (1920–1925) Khorezm SSR (1920–1925) Nakhichevan ASSR (1920–1923) Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR (1990–1991) South Ossetian SR (1990–1991)
1The annexation of the Baltic republics in 1940 was considered as an illegal occupation and was not recognized by the majority of the international community such as the United States, United Kingdom and the European Community. The Soviet Union officially recognized their independence on September 6, 1991, prior to its final dissolution three months later.
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Flag of the Soviet Union.svg Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
By name
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By year
established
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1921–1991 Dagestan
1921–1924 Mountain
1921–1990 Nakhchivan
1922–1991 Yakut
1923–1990 Buryat1
1923–1940 Karelian
1924–1940 Moldavian
1924–1929 Tajik
1925–1992 Chuvash
1925–1936 Kazak2
1926–1936 Kirghiz
1931–1991 Abkhaz
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1934–1990 Mordovian
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1935–1943 Kalmyk
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1936–1990 Komi
1936–1990 Mari
1936–1990 North Ossetian
1944–1957 Kabardin
1956–1991 Karelian
1957–1990 Chechen-Ingush
1957–1991 Kabardino-Balkar
1958–1990 Kalmyk
1961–1992 Tuva
1990–1991 Gorno-Altai
1991–1992 Crimean
1 Buryat–Mongol until 1958.
2 Kazak ASSR was called Kirghiz ASSR until 1925.
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Flag of the Soviet Union.svg Autonomous oblasts of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
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Coat of arms of the Soviet Union
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Satellite states
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Annexing SSRs
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Revolts and
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Cold War events
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Conditions
Emigration and defection (list of defectors) Sovietization of the Baltic states Information dissemination Politics Economies Telephone tapping
Decline
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Post-Cold War topics
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Disinformation
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Books
Disinformation by Ion Mihai Pacepa Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy The KGB and Soviet Disinformation The Case for Latvia Who's Who in the CIA
Disinformation
operations
1995 CIA disinformation controversy CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory Funkspiel Habbush letter Information Operations Roadmap Jihadunspun.com Jonestown conspiracy theories K-1000 battleship Mafkarat al Islam Media censorship and disinformation during the Gezi Park protests Mohamed Atta's alleged Prague connection Niger uranium forgeries Operation INFEKTION Operation Neptune Operation Shocker Operation Toucan Pope Pius XII and Russia Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections Seat 12 Strategy of tension Trolls from Olgino U.S. Army Field Manual 30-31B Web brigades Yellow rain
Countering
disinformation
Active Measures Working Group Counter Misinformation Team Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act East StratCom Team FactCheck.org PolitiFact Snopes.com United States Information Agency
Related series: Fraud • Media manipulation • Propaganda.