Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
constituent republic of the Soviet Union (1922–1991)
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR) was a revolutionary, and later, communist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian SFSR was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR and the USSR as a whole was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad (Petrograd until 1924), Stalingrad (Volgograd after 1961), Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.
On 7 November 1917 [O.S. 25 October], as a result of the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as a sovereign revolutionary republic and, after July 1918, the world's first communist state guided by communist ideology. The first constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922, the Russian SFSR signed a treaty officially creating the USSR. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin, supported by the Democratic Russia pro-reform movement, was elected the first and only President of the RSFSR, a post that would later become the Presidency of the Russian Federation. The August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow with the temporary brief internment of President Mikhail Gorbachev destabilised the Soviet Union. Following these events, Gorbachev lost all his remaining power, with Yeltsin superseding him as the pre-eminent figure in the country. On 8 December 1991, the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords declaring dissolution of the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a loose replacement confederation.
The public source identifies “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” as constituent republic of the Soviet Union (1922–1991). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Russian, Soviet and Federative.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic”, the useful work is to connect “constituent republic of the Soviet Union (1922–1991)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2184. VIAF identifies the subject as 140306806. The Library of Congress control number is n80160431. Authority coordinates are 62.000, 100.000. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1922, 1991 and 1990.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.