revolution. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940, as a result of a secret protocol in the 1939 pact between the Stalinist government in the Soviet Union and the Hitler government in Germany (Paxton,
1989). Although these newly independent countries lost their political independence, it is significant to note that social ist governments along the Soviet model had been elected in each of these countries subsequent in 1917 and 1918, and where these governments had been overthrown, the action occurred only in those instances of armed intervention by the British Estonia, and Latvia, and the Poles Lithiania (Paxton, 1989).
The approximately 282 million citizens of the Soviet Union reside in the 15 constituent republics which form the political entity of the Soviet Union, and, within these republics, within a number of autonomous areas and regions (Paxton, 1989). The great majority (97.2 percent) of the population of the Soviet Union belongs to one of
...