Soviet involvement in regime change

Map of locations affected by Soviet involvement in regime change.[Note 1]
  Soviet Union
  Interfered in elections on behalf of preferred candidate(s) or against non-preferred candidate(s)
  Organized or gave material/financial support to coup plotters/armed groups which failed to overthrow incumbent government
  Organized or gave material/financial support to coup plotters/armed groups which overthrew incumbent government or established one after armed conflict.
  Invaded country to enforce Soviet interests outside declaration of war.

Soviet involvement in regime change entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments. In the 1920s, the nascent Soviet Union intervened in multiple governments primarily in Asia, acquiring the territory of Tuva and making Mongolia into a satellite state.[1] During World War II, the Soviet Union helped overthrow many puppet regimes of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, including in East Asia and much of Europe. Soviet forces were also instrumental in ending the rule of Adolf Hitler over Germany.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet government struggled with the United States for global leadership and influence within the context of the Cold War. It expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond its traditional area of operations. In addition, the Soviet Union and Russia engaged in foreign electoral intervention in the national elections of many countries. One study indicated that the Soviet Union and Russia engaged in 36 interventions in foreign elections from 1946 to 2000.[2][3][4]

The Soviet Union ratified the UN Charter in 1945, the preeminent international law document,[5] which legally bound the Soviet government to the Charter's provisions, including Article 2(4), which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations, except in very limited circumstances.[6] Therefore, any legal claim advanced to justify regime change by a foreign power carries a particularly heavy burden.[7]


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  1. ^ Dullin, Sabine; Forestier-Peyrat, Étienne; Lin, Yuexin Rachel; Shimazu, Naoko (30 December 2021). "2 From autonomy to an Asian revolution: Koreans and Buriat-Mongols in the Russian imperial revolution and the Soviet new imperialism, 1917-1926". The Russian Revolution in Asia: From Baku to Batavia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-47224-0. Before the Second World War, the Bolsheviks' new imperialism extended the informal empire only to Mongolia and Tuva... Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva became the first stable entities in the informal Soviet empire.
  2. ^ Levin, Dov H. (June 2016). "When the Great Power Gets a Vote: The Effects of Great Power Electoral Interventions on Election Results". International Studies Quarterly. 60 (2): 189–202. doi:10.1093/isq/sqv016. For example, the U.S. and the USSR/Russia have intervened in one of every nine competitive national level executive elections between 1946 and 2000.
  3. ^ Levin, Dov H. (June 2016). "When the Great Power Gets a Vote: The Effects of Great Power Electoral Interventions on Election Results". International Studies Quarterly. 60 (2): 189–202. doi:10.1093/isq/sqv016.
  4. ^ Levin, Dov H. (7 September 2016). "Sure, the U.S. and Russia often meddle in foreign elections. Does it matter?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 May 2019.
  5. ^ Mansell, Wade and Openshaw, Karen, "International Law: A Critical Introduction," Chapter 5, Hart Publishing, 2014, https://books.google.com/books?id=XYrqAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT140
  6. ^ "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." United Nations, "Charter of the United Nations," Article 2(4), http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.html Archived 28 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Fox, Gregory, "Regime Change," 2013, Oxford Public International Law, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Sections C(12) and G(53)–(55), Archived 4 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine