5 Interesting Facts About the Soviet Union

Ranging from assassination attempts to nuclear disasters

A photograph of Vladimir Lenin by Pavel Zhukov, 1920 (Wikimedia Commons)

Communism and fascism were the two political nightmares of the twentieth century. Whilst most people know something about the latter due to the prominence of Nazi Germany in popular culture, the story of the first communist state isn’t particularly well-known.

The Soviet Union arose out of the October Revolution in 1917 and the bloody civil war that followed. This regime lasted for seventy years, and during this time, plenty of dark yet interesting things took place, providing history enthusiasts with a treasure trove of fascinating material.

1. Lenin Was Almost Assassinated by A Woman

A photograph of Fanny Kaplan by an unknown photographer, c. 1918 (Wikimedia Commons)

Vladimir Lenin was the first leader of the Soviet Union. He died in January 1924 after a series of strokes, but several years earlier, he was almost killed by a Ukrainian woman named Fanny Kaplan.

Kaplan was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and she disliked Lenin and the Bolsheviks for turning the Soviet Union into a one-party state. Determined for revenge, Kaplan tried to assassinate…