Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

The Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Mari ASSR) was the successor to the Mari Autonomous Oblast. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Mari ASSR became the Mari El Republic, a federal subject of the Russian Federation.

See also

Coordinates: 56°34′N 47°56′E / 56.567°N 47.933°E / 56.567; 47.933

Republics of the Soviet Union

The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics (Russian: союзные республики, soyuznye respubliki) of the Soviet Union were ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. For most of its history, the Soviet Union was a highly centralized state; the decentralization reforms during the era of Perestroika ("Restructuring") and Glasnost ("Openness") conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Overview

According to the Article 76 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, a Union Republic was a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with other Soviet Republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".

In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). All of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation (until 1990), had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.

Socialist state

A socialist state or socialist republic (sometimes Workers' State) refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. In Western usage, the term "Communist state" is often used in reference to single-party socialist states governed by parties adhering to a variant of Marxist-Leninism; however these states officially refer to themselves as "socialist states" that are in the process of building socialism and do not describe themselves as "communist" or as having achieved communism. Aside from the "Communist states", a number of other states have described their orientation as "socialist" in their constitutions.

A socialist state is to be distinguished from a multi-party liberal democratic state governed by a self-described socialist party, where the state is not constitutionally bound to the construction of socialism. In such cases, the political system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism.

Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union

An Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) of the Soviet Union (Russian: автономная советская социалистическая республика, АССР) was a type of administrative unit in the Soviet Union created for certain nations. The ASSRs had a status lower than the union republics of the Soviet Union, but higher than the autonomous oblasts and the autonomous okrugs.

In the Russian SFSR, for example, Chairmen of the Government of the ASSRs were officially members of the Government of the RSFSR. Unlike the union republics, the autonomous republics did not have a right to disaffiliate themselves from the Union. The level of political, administrative and cultural autonomy they enjoyed varied with time—it was most substantial in the 1920s (Korenizatsiya), the 1950s after the death of Joseph Stalin, and in the Leonid Brezhnev era.

Azerbaijan SSR

Georgian SSR