To a generation raised after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union may sound like a historical abstraction. But for those who lived under it, the word union was a lie – masking occupation, terror and the systematic erasure of national sovereignty.

Younger generations must never forget that the Soviet Union was not only an experiment that went catastrophically wrong, but also a linguistic fraud. For the forcibly occupied nations, there was no union – not in any meaningful or positive sense of the word.

After a slow disintegration along ethnic fault lines, followed by a sudden and dramatic collapse, the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. It was a historic earthquake. For Estonians and other Eastern Europeans, it marked a seismic shift from occupation to independence – an upheaval that shattered Soviet terror and restored pre-occupation normality.

Soviet soldiers surround the Tallinn TV Tower on 20 August 1991. That evening, Estonia proclaimed the restoration of its independence. Photo: U. Ojaste.

Yet although more than three decades have passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the failure of its social experiment, the term itself has re-entered the public conversation. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, along with other troubling developments across Europe, has returned Eastern Europe’s Soviet past to news bulletins and social media feeds.

More than a generation has now been born since the greatest geopolitical course correction of the twentieth century: the fall of the Iron Curtain. Anyone under the age of around forty has no lived memory of those events and knows the Soviet Union only through textbooks. That, in itself, is a good thing. Although an embalmed and plasticised Lenin still lies above ground in Red Square, the Soviet past has largely remained buried where it belongs.

A Soviet SSN-8 intercontinental ballistic missile on display beneath a portrait of Lenin during a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square, 7 November 1964. Public domain.

But the grim truths of the Soviet Union must be restated, again and again, to prevent a repetition of its genocidal mistakes. And the truth is this: for Estonians and many other proud, distinct European peoples, the term Soviet Union is a misnomer – an oxymoron. There was no union. It never existed. What prevailed instead was brutal occupation, fear and repression.

Estonia was not part of this so-called union by choice or invitation. Nor were the other Baltic states or numerous independent nations. They were occupied – by force and coercion. Where, exactly, is the union in that?

Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Germany’s foreign minister, shake hands after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 – a Nazi–Soviet non-aggression agreement that secretly divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, paving the way for the occupation and annexation of independent states, including the Baltic nations. Photo: Bundesarchiv, shared under the CC BY-SA 3.0 DE licence.

The word union derives from the Latin unus, meaning “one”. In Western civilisation, however, the word carries a broader implication: a voluntary association formed around shared interests and common purpose. The Soviet Union’s “common purpose”, by contrast, was forced assimilation and ruthless oppression.

A marriage is a union – entered into freely. Two people stand at the altar by choice, exchanging rings whose unbroken circles symbolise unity.

Western labour unions, which Soviet theorists claimed to admire, are independent of government power. Soviet labour unions, however, had no such autonomy; they were little more than thinly disguised extensions of the communist state.

A bread factory in the Soviet-occupied Estonia. Photo by Gunnar Loss.

In plumbing, a union connects two pipes, allowing fluid to flow between them. Crucially, it can also be voluntarily dismantled into its original parts. Soviet “plumbing” did the opposite: it constricted, restricted and choked the flow of individual liberty.

Contrast this with today’s European Union – a voluntary and mutually beneficial arrangement from which member states may freely withdraw, as demonstrated by Brexit. No such exit was available to nations occupied by the Soviets.

NATO, too, is a voluntary defensive alliance, created in response to Soviet aggression. Countries may apply for membership – and may leave if they choose.

And that is the point. To those too young to remember, or not yet born: do not be misled by the comforting word union when reading about the Soviet Union. Western democracies never recognised the legitimacy of Soviet occupation. So once again – how was that a union?

Map of the Soviet Union in 1989, showing its 15 constituent “republics” shortly before the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of independence by occupied nations in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

The official name of the Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – the USSR. Young people, do not believe it for a moment. The name was fiction.

The second S stood for socialism. In reality, Soviet “socialism” was inhumane communism – marked by mass executions, deportations to Siberian forced-labour camps, and repression drenched in red.

The R stood for “republics”. Yet these were not republics at all, but distinct nations forcibly annexed – handed over under the sinister terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

And as for the U in USSR – forget it. It was a myth.

There was no union.