Carving Up the Russian Empire into the Soviet Socialist Republics

The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, followed by the civil war that ensued, created a unique environment in which the Bolsheviks sought to rebuild state authority whilst simultaneously redefining the constitutional structure of the former imperial lands. The transition from empire to Soviet federation was neither linear nor uncontested. It involved a complex interplay of ideology, military coercion, local nationalism, and pragmatic governance. By the time the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally constituted in December 1922, the old imperial territories had been reimagined as a hierarchy of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs), each ostensibly sovereign yet firmly subordinate to Moscow. We trace the process by which the Russian Empire was carved into these republics, and consider the political, military, and ideological forces that shaped the borders and constitutional structures of the early Soviet state.

The Imperial Legacy and the Crisis of 1917

The Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War was a vast, multi-ethnic polity whose administrative divisions bore little relation to modern notions of national self-determination. The February Revolution of 1917 precipitated the disintegration of central authority. The Provisional Government struggled to maintain control, and peripheral regions rapidly asserted autonomy. National movements, long suppressed under the Romanovs, re-emerged across the Baltic, Caucasus and Ukrainian lands. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, Lenin and his colleagues inherited an empire in a state of near dissolution.

Lenin’s government adopted the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, including the right to secede. This was a departure from Tsarist policy, motivated partly by ideology and partly by the pragmatic need to win support from non-Russian groups who were suspicious of Bolshevik intentions. Nevertheless the Bolsheviks understood that the survival of their revolution depended upon reconstituting much of the former empire under their authority. The tension between proclaimed national rights and the practical necessity of central control would define the structure of the emerging Soviet republics.

The Initial Emergence of National Republics

Between 1917 and 1920, a number of de facto independent states emerged on the ruins of the empire. Some were short-lived; others fought bitter wars for recognition.

Ukraine proclaimed independence in several stages, culminating in the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The Bolsheviks, however, established a rival Soviet Ukrainian government in Kharkiv and waged protracted campaigns to bring the territory under their control. By 1920, after complex conflicts involving Polish, White Russian, anarchist, and nationalist forces, the Bolsheviks had largely succeeded in imposing Soviet power over most of Ukraine.

In the Baltic region, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared independence and resisted both German and Bolshevik influence. By 1920, they had secured international recognition and remained outside the Soviet framework until their forcible annexation in 1940.

Belarus oscillated between independence and Soviet occupation, with competing national and Bolshevik governments claiming authority. The eventual establishment of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic reflected both the limited strength of local nationalism and the strategic significance of the region as a frontier with Poland.

The Caucasus saw similarly convoluted developments. Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan declared independence as the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which swiftly collapsed, giving rise to separate independent states. These too were incorporated by force into the Soviet system between 1920 and 1921.

Central Asia, by contrast, had weaker nationalist movements but strong local resistance to Bolshevik rule. The Bolsheviks first established the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), and later carved the region into separate union republics.

The Formation of the Soviet Union (1922)

The initial Soviet constitution was asymmetric. Some territories, such as Ukraine and Belarus, were constituted as formally separate Soviet republics, while others were incorporated as autonomous republics or regions within the RSFSR. This uneven structure reflected both historical contingencies and Bolshevik debates about the nature of the future Soviet state.

Stalin, then Commissar for Nationalities, advocated the autonomisation plan, under which non-Russian Soviet republics would be absorbed into the RSFSR while retaining limited cultural autonomy. Lenin opposed this, fearing it would replicate the imperial chauvinism of the Tsarist state and alienate non-Russian nationalities. Instead Lenin insisted upon the creation of a union of formally equal republics, each with constitutional sovereignty and the theoretical right to secede. The result was the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, signed in December 1922 by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian SFSR (uniting Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan under one federative structure).

Thus the USSR began as a federation of four republics, although many future republics had already been formed as autonomous units and would later be elevated to union republics.

National Delimitation in Central Asia (1924–1936)

Perhaps the most striking example of ethnic and territorial reorganisation was in Central Asia. The Bolsheviks faced a region whose ethnic landscape was complex and whose political loyalties were fluid. The policy of national delimitation, pursued between 1924 and 1936, sought to create distinct national republics based on a mixture of ethnographic, linguistic, economic and political considerations.

The old Turkestan ASSR, Khorezm and Bukhara regions were dismantled and reconstituted into the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs (1924). The Tajik Autonomous SSR, initially part of Uzbekistan, was elevated to a full union republic in 1929. Later the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Region became the Kirghiz ASSR (1926) and then the Kirghiz SSR (1936). Likewise, the Kazakh ASSR became the Kazakh SSR in 1936. In these cases, the carving of republic boundaries often reflected the Bolshevik desire to promote national identities that would be loyal to Soviet rule, while simultaneously preventing the emergence of large, potentially oppositional regional power blocs.

The Transformation of the Caucasus and the End of the Transcaucasian Federation

The Transcaucasian SFSR, initially formed for pragmatic wartime reasons, proved unwieldy and was dissolved in 1936. Its constituent parts—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—were elevated to full Soviet Socialist Republics. Their borders broadly reflected earlier imperial divisions but were complicated by intercommunal tensions, as in Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. The resulting arrangements proved durable in the sense that they remained frozen during the Soviet era, yet they also sowed the seeds for conflict after the USSR collapsed.

The Baltic States, Moldova and Late Additions

The USSR achieved its maximal territorial extent in 1940 and 1945. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Baltic States were forcibly incorporated as the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SSRs. Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were annexed from Romania, leading to the creation of the Moldavian SSR. After the Second World War the borders of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs expanded westward at Poland’s expense, reflecting both Stalin’s strategic aims and the ethnic transformations caused by wartime population transfers.

Ideology and Control beneath the Veneer of Federalism

Although the Soviet republics were presented as sovereign entities, their autonomy was largely notional. Moscow controlled economic planning, foreign policy, defence and internal security. The republics served ideological purposes: they projected an image of voluntary multinational unity, while providing administrative frameworks for managing ethnic diversity and suppressing nationalist ambitions. The very existence of republican borders, however, proved significant. When Soviet authority weakened in the late 1980s, these borders became focal points for national revival, and the republics used their constitutional right to secede as the legal basis for independence in 1991.

The carving up of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Socialist Republics was a product of revolutionary ideology, military conquest, administrative necessity, and pragmatic nation-building. The Bolsheviks sought to transform a vast and diverse imperial territory into a federation that embodied the principles of Marxism–Leninism while preserving strategic cohesion. The resulting republics were neither wholly artificial nor wholly organic; they combined genuine cultural and linguistic identities with borders drawn to secure Soviet power. Paradoxically the same structures that enabled the consolidation of Bolshevik rule later facilitated the dissolution of the Soviet state. The successor republics that emerged in 1991 thus carry forward both the legacies and the contradictions of the imperial and Soviet pasts.