The
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
took an active role in the
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
and other major international and regional organizations. At the behest of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the Soviet Union took a role in the establishment of the UN in 1945. The Soviet Union insisted that there be veto rights in the Security Council and that alterations in the
United Nations CharterThe United Nations Charter is the treaty that forms and establishes the international organization called the United Nations. It was signed at the Herbst Theatre of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, United States, on June 26, 1945, by 50 of the 51 original...
be unanimously approved by the five permanent members.
The USSR initially protested the membership of
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
and the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, whose independence was then largely theoretical (being basically colonies of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, respectively, in all but name).
A demand by the Soviet Union that all fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics be recognized as member states in the UN was counter-demanded by the United States that all then forty-eight
stateA U.S. state is any one of 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government . Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile...
s be similarly recognized.
The
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
took an active role in the
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
and other major international and regional organizations. At the behest of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the Soviet Union took a role in the establishment of the UN in 1945. The Soviet Union insisted that there be veto rights in the Security Council and that alterations in the
United Nations CharterThe United Nations Charter is the treaty that forms and establishes the international organization called the United Nations. It was signed at the Herbst Theatre of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, United States, on June 26, 1945, by 50 of the 51 original...
be unanimously approved by the five permanent members.
The USSR initially protested the membership of
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
and the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, whose independence was then largely theoretical (being basically colonies of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, respectively, in all but name).
A demand by the Soviet Union that all fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics be recognized as member states in the UN was counter-demanded by the United States that all then forty-eight
stateA U.S. state is any one of 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government . Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile...
s be similarly recognized. Ultimately two Soviet Republics (
Ukrainian SSRThe Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or the Ukrainian SSR was one of the founders of the Soviet Union constituent republic that made up the former Soviet Union from its formation in 1922 to its abolition in 1991.-Name:...
and
Byelorussian SSRThe Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union...
) were admitted as full members of the UN, so between 1945–1991 the Soviet Union was represented by three seats in the United Nations. The United States was also offered two additional seats, but due to political problems (regarding which two of the 48 states would be represented), it was never acted upon.
A major watershed in Soviet UN policy occurred in January 1950, when Soviet representatives boycotted UN functions in protest over the occupation of the
seat of ChinaChina's seat in the United Nations and membership of the United Nations Security Council has been occupied by the People's Republic of China since October 25, 1971. The representatives of the PRC first attended the UN, including the United Nations Security Council, as China's representatives on...
by the
Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it...
(which government had been relocated to
TaipeiTaipei is the largest city in Taiwan and has served as the de facto capital of the Republic of China since the Chinese Civil War in 1949. It is situated on the Danshui River, almost at the northern tip of the island, about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
in December
1949The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China . The war began in April 1927, amidst the Northern Expedition,. The war represented an ideological split between the Western-supported Nationalist KMT and the Soviet-supported Communist CPC...
) and the corresponding exclusion of the newly declared
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
. In the absence of the Soviet representatives, the UN Security Council was able to vote for the intervention of UN military forces in what would become the
Korean WarThe Korean War is a war that started between North Korea and South Korea on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice signed 27 July, 1953...
. The Soviet Union subsequently returned to various UN bodies in August 1950. This return marked the beginning of a new policy of active participation in international and regional organizations.
For many years, the Western powers played a guiding role in UN deliberations, but by the 1960s many former colonies had been granted independence and had joined the UN. These states, which became the majority in the General Assembly and other bodies, were increasingly receptive to Soviet "anti-imperialist" appeals. By the 1970s, the UN deliberations had generally become increasingly hostile toward the West and toward the United States in particular, as evidenced by pro-Soviet and anti-United States voting trends in the General Assembly. Although the Soviet Union benefited from and encouraged these trends, it was not mainly responsible for them. Rather, the trends were largely a result of the growing debate over the redistribution of the world's wealth between the "have" and "have-not" states.
The Soviet Union did not, however, achieve total support in the UN for its foreign policy positions. The Soviet Union and
Third WorldThe term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned or neutral with either capitalism and NATO or communism and the Soviet Union...
states often agreed that "
imperialismImperialism, as defined by the dictionary of human geography, is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Imperialism, in many ways, is described...
" caused and continued to maintain the disparities in the world distribution of wealth. They disagreed, however, on the proper level of Soviet aid to the Third World. Also, the Soviet Union encountered opposition to its occupation of Afghanistan and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and received little support (as evidenced by Third World abstentions) for its 1987 proposal on the creation of a "Comprehensive System of International Peace and Security."
The Soviet Union by the late 1980s belonged to most of the specialized agencies of the UN. During 1986 Western media reported that East European and Asian
communist countriesIn political science, a Communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule of a Communist party and a professed allegiance to a communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state....
allied with the Soviet Union received more
development aidDevelopment aid or development cooperation is aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, social and political development of developing countries.It is distinguished from humanitarian aid as being aimed at alleviating poverty in the...
from the UN than they and the Soviet Union contributed. This revelation belied communist states' rhetorical support in the UN for the establishment of a
New International Economic OrderThe New International Economic Order was a set of proposals put forward during the 1970s by developing countries through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to promote their interests by improving their terms of trade, increasing development assistance, developed-country tariff...
for the transfer of wealth from the rich
Northern HemisphereThe Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...
to the poor
Southern HemisphereThe Southern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is south of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half ball'...
nations. Partly because of ongoing Third World criticism of the Soviet record of meager economic assistance to the Third World and of Soviet contributions to UN agencies, in September 1987 the Soviet Union announced that it would pay some portion of its arrears to the UN. This policy change also came at a time of financial hardship in the UN caused partly by the decision of the United States to withhold contributions pending cost-cutting efforts in the UN.
During the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union made several suggestions for increasing UN involvement in the settlement of superpower and regional problems and conflicts, though these suggestions were not implemented, they constituted new initiatives in Soviet foreign policy and represented a break with the nature of past Soviet foreign policy.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it formally "notified" the UN that it was designating
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
as its successor. The Russian Federation was then given the USSR's permanent seat on the Security Council.