The Soviet Union was officially established
On this day · 30 December 1922
On the last days of 1922, four republics signed a Treaty of Union that bound them into the USSR — a state that would last nearly seventy years.
On 30 December 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR met in Moscow and approved a Declaration of Union and a Treaty of Union, formally creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The new state drew together four founding members: the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics.
The documents set out a federal structure — shared institutions, a federal judiciary, common citizenship, and rules dividing budgets among the republics. On paper, the Declaration framed the USSR as a voluntary union of equals, even granting each republic a formal right to secede, a promise that meant little in practice.
The arrangement crystallized in the years that followed; the first Soviet Constitution based on the 1922 treaty was adopted in 1924. From these four republics the USSR would eventually grow to fifteen — a superpower born from a treaty signed in the final hours of a single December day.
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