The Soviet Union was the only superpower that could compete with the United States in the second half of last century. Although there was no direct fight, there was no little movement under the table. It is exactly the sentence "its prosperity is also prosperous, and its death is also sudden." 199 1 year, the disintegration of the huge Soviet empire became the most important international political event in the 1990s. Looking back at the 70-year history of the Soviet Union, you will find that this empire was once so powerful, but it was so rapidly declining. Fact 1: When the Soviet Union was most prosperous, its population exceeded 280 million, and its land area reached more than 22 million square kilometers, accounting for 42% of the area of Europe and Asia, accounting for 1/22 of the whole earth area and about 1/6 of the earth's land area. Second only to the British Empire and the Mongolian Empire in human history. Fact 2: In the 1970s when Brezhnev was in power, the gap between the Soviet Union and the United States kept narrowing. At that time, the United States was mired in the Vietnam War, its national strength declined, and the Soviet Union gradually overtook the United States. Its industrial output value is about 70% of that of the United States, while its military strength is equivalent to that of the United States. Fact 3: Although the Soviet Union implemented a planned economy, people enjoyed high welfare benefits, education was paid by the state, and students enjoyed free medical care and insurance from primary school to university as soon as they entered school. According to the law, everyone in this country is entitled to a month's paid vacation every year. Maternity has a three-year holiday, and workers can also go to the Black Sea for free. In fact, the Soviet Union reached its peak in the 1940s and 1980s, with more than 5 million troops, not including border guards and internal affairs forces. The main battle is 55,000 tanks, 63,000 armored vehicles and 40,000 nuclear bombs. Fact 5: During Khrushchev's reign, the Soviet Union implemented welfare housing distribution, and each family was assigned independent housing, with an average of 9 square meters. At that time, the residential buildings were all designed according to the unified drawings, and the shape was rectangular matchrope, much like the old workshops in Shanghai. Because the national housing planning tends to be consistent, the Soviets went to another city on business and actually had the same house as themselves. Fact 6: During the Soviet era, the exchange rate of 1 rupee against US$ 0.6 remained for more than 30 years. In the first year after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the ruble immediately plunged to 1 USD 1.400 rubles. Fact 7: At its peak, the Soviet Union produced 25 million tons of chemical fertilizer, 2 million tons more than the United States, with an annual output of 1 10000, 3.5 times that of the United States, 560,000 tractors, twice that of the United States, 22 million tons of merchant ships, and only160,000 tons in the United States. The oil output is 650 million tons, which is a record that Russia, which inherited the mantle of the Soviet Union, has never broken. Fact 8: In the five years before the Anti-Japanese War, the Soviet Union not only assisted China's aircraft 1200, guns 1600, court guns 1000, 50,000 rifles and 0.8 billion rounds of bullets/KLOC-0, but also sent more than 2,000 volunteers to China to fight against Japan and shot down 5,000 Japanese planes. It was not until the outbreak of the Soviet-German War that the Soviet Union stopped its aid to China. In fact, in the 1990s and 1980s, there were over 800,000 private cars in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. At that time, there were not so many private cars in China. Fact 10: It's almost 30 years since the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia, which has only inherited part of the Soviet heritage, has not developed much in recent years and still has considerable volume and strength.