FUN WITH MAPS – ISSUE 2023-124 DAILY FEATURE:

By Steve Kovacs (Introduction by Chuck Gibson)

LOVELAND, OH (July 6, 2023) – In today’s edition of Fun with Maps from Steve Kovacs, we visit the history of a once powerful union.

Could Not last Even a Lifetime

One hundred years ago, on July 6, 1923, the Treaty of Union was accepted by the Central Executive Committee and the Soviet Union was formally born, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Lenin was born to an upper-middle class family 400 miles east of Moscow on the Volga River in 1870.

He embraced revolutionary socialist philosophy early in his life, was expelled from university because of it, but earned his law degree eventually from St. Petersburg University.  After more run-ins with the law, he was exiled to Siberia for three years then he left Russia for a proper exile in Western Europe starting in 1900 – living in Germany, Switzerland, England, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (where he was imprisoned for a while).  

To stay ahead of the Czarist, he changed his family name from Ulyanov to Lenin, after a major river in Siberia, the Lena.

He returned in 1917 to Russia via Finland.  The rest is history – the 1917 October Revolution, and Lenin being named head of the new state.

Lenin soon had a series of strokes, taking him away eventually in 1923.

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 by a two-sentence statement signed by Gorbachev, front of the world’s press core, using a borrowed Mont Blanc pen from the CNN reporter.  Lenin would not have approved.

This Homann map of Asia from 1753 shows all of the Imperial Russian Empire, including the European portion, on the upper half of the map.

Steve Kovacs and his wife Theresa reside in Loveland, Ohio where they raised their two children. He is a passionate collector of antique maps.

Visit his antique map boutique world-on-paper online. Watch for his daily feature Steve Kovacs: Fun with Maps here on Loveland Beacon.