SFSR

Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR) is a generic term for the constitutional form used by several republics within the Soviet Union. The most prominent example was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the largest and most populous of the union’s constituent republics.

The RSFSR was proclaimed in 1917 after the October Revolution and formalized by the 1918 constitution as a constituent republic of the new Soviet state. In 1922, it joined with three other republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, while retaining its own institutions and a degree of internal autonomy. Within the USSR, the RSFSR had its own constitution, government, and legislative body, notably the Supreme Soviet and, later, the Council of Ministers, while sharing sovereignty with union-level institutions.

The RSFSR accounted for a large share of the Soviet Union’s population, industrial base, and natural resources. It had representation in the USSR’s political structure and played a central role in the economy and governance of the federation. The late 1980s brought reforms as the Soviet system liberalized; in 1990 the RSFSR declared state sovereignty, asserting primacy of its laws in many areas and signaling a shift in the balance of power between the republic and the union.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the RSFSR transitioned to the Russian Federation, which subsequently adopted a new constitution in 1993 that established the current constitutional framework of the successor state. The term SFSR is now rarely used in reference to the Russian state, which is typically described as the Russian Federation or simply Russia.