The book is aimed at the academic community, as well as the wider reading audience, who wish to gain a brief first contact with the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The author presents succinctly and comprehensively, from a historiographical perspective, the main political, economic, social, military, and diplomatic developments that marked the evolutionary course of the Soviet Union, from its establishment to its dismantling. The issues under investigation include, among others, the causes of the October Revolution of 1917, the functioning structures of the multinational Soviet state, the relationships of political power mechanisms with society, the mobilization of the country during the Second World War, the leading role played by the Soviet Union in the international political scene within the framework of intense hostility with the West, as well as the factors that contributed to the disintegration of the communist regime in 1991.