In its final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR), often called simply Soviet republics. Within the USSR they were also called union republics. All of them were socialist republics, and all of them, with the exception of Russia had their own Communist parties, part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They are all independent countries now; 12 of them (all except the Baltic states) are very loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States. ------------------------------------------------------ Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation. In accordance with article 72 of the Soviet constitution adopted in 1977, each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Throughout the Cold War, this right was widely considered to be meaningless, however Article 72 was used in December 1991 to effectively dissolve the Soviet Union, when Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus seceded from the USSR. --------------------------------------------------------- In practice, the USSR was a highly centralised entity from its creation in 1922 until the mid-1980s when political forces unleashed by reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev resulted in the loosening of central control and its ultimate collapse. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, the political foundation of the Soviet Union was formed by the Soviets (Councils) of People's Deputies. These existed at all levels of the administrative hierarchy, with the Soviet Union as a whole under the nominal control of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, located in Moscow. ------------------------------------------------------------ Along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the parallel party organs, and appointments of all party and state officials required approval of the central organs of the party. General practice in the republics outside of Russia was that the head of state in a republic was a local official while the party general secretary was from outside the republic. ------------------------------------------------------- Each republic had its own unique set of state symbols: a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of the Russian SFSR, an anthem.