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The '''Soviet Union''' (Russian: Советский Союз, ''Sovyetskiy Soyuz''), officially the '''Union of Soviet Socialist Republics''' (or '''USSR''') (Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, ''Soyuz Sovietskykh Sotsialisticheskykh Respublik'', abbreviated ''СССР'') was a [[progressive]] [[police state]] that existed from 1922 to December 25, 1991,<ref>[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ussr-established/ This Day in History USSR Established 1922]</ref> then broke into 15 separate countries, most notably the [[Russian Federation]]. Throughout its history, the leadership in the [[Kremlin]] and [[Politburo]] was never dominated by ethnic Russians. The communist ideology suppressed the dominant culture and national identity while promoting [[diversity]] and inclusion. of minorities.
The Soviet Union was the most powerful established [[socialist]] state in history, coming to power under [[Lenin]] in 1918 and killing tens of millions of its people to establish an extreme [[leftwing]] ideology. Neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had any tradition of [[democracy]], and the Russian people never voted for socialism or communism.
According to declassified CIA documents, [[George Soros]] targeted the Soviet government as early as 1987. Soros worked closely with a CIA linked non-governmental organization, the Institute for East-West Security Studies, to take advantage of Glasnost and Perestroika for the purpose of infiltrating and sabotaging the Soviet economic and political system. <ref>https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/09/soros-and-his-cia-friends-targeted-ussr-russia-1987/</ref>
To assent to the reunification of Germany, Soviet leader [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] ultimately agreed to a proposal from then U.S. Secretary of State [[James Baker (DOS)]] that a reunited Germany would be part of NATO but the military alliance would not move “one inch” to the east, that is, absorb any of the former [[Warsaw Pact]] nations into NATO.
On Feb. 9, 1990, Baker said: “We consider that the consultations and discussions in the framework of the 2+4 mechanism should give a guarantee that the reunification of Germany will not lead to the enlargement of NATO’s military organization to the East.” On the next day, then German Chancellor [[Helmut Kohl]] said: “We consider that NATO should not enlarge its sphere of activity.”<ref>https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/28/the-tangled-tale-of-nato-expansion-at-the-heart-of-ukraine-crisis/</ref> Gorbachev’s mistake was not to get it in writing as a legally-binding agreement.<ref>For years it was believed there was no written record of the Baker-Gorbachev exchange at all, until the National Security Archive at George Washington University in December 2017 published a series of memos and cables about these assurances against NATO expansion eastward.</ref>
[[File:Schifrinson.PNG|right|350px|thumb|Gorbachev and Yeltsin agreed to collapsing the Soviet Union in exchange for a non-NATO expansion pledge. In 2021 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied such agreements ever existed or discussions even took place.<ref>https://www.rt.com/russia/544257-nato-boss-expansion-proposals/</ref>]]
{{quotebox-float|“U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous ‘not one inch eastward’ assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by [[Western]] leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents …
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of [[East German]] territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. … The documents reinforce former CIA Director [[Robert Gates]]’s criticism of ‘pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.’ …
President [[George H.W. Bush]] had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (‘I have not jumped up and down on the [[Berlin Wall]]”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests.’”<ref>https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early</ref>}}
The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in [[Bonn]], [[West Germany]] between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which Western officials made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO would not push into territory east of Germany. “We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document in British foreign ministry archives quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz. “NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added. A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for [[eastern Europe]]an countries is “unacceptable.”<ref>https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/nato-osterweiterung-aktenfund-stuetzt-russische-version-a-1613d467-bd72-4f02-8e16-2cd6d3285295</ref>
The dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991 was a watershed event in terms of the [[decline of leftism]] and the [[decline of the secular left]].