Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs.

There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars.

As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states by 1955, the pact has been long considered 'superfluous', and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a 'cardboard castle'. The beginning of the Cold War saw the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union confront the Western Bloc of the United States, with the latter grouping becoming largely united in 1949 under NATO and the former grouping becoming largely united in 1955 under the Warsaw Pact. In the aftermath of World War II, the territory occupied by the Red Army formed various Soviet satellite states. The combined Soviet civilian and military casualty count-estimated to be around 20 million people-accounted for the majority of losses of Allied forces. After the outbreak of World War II, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Stalin conducted the Great Purge to remove his actual and perceived opponents. The forced labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. Stalin inaugurated a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a famine in 1930–1933 that killed millions.

Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power. As the war progressed in the Bolshevik's favor, the RSFSR began to incorporate land conquered from the war into nominally independent states, which were unified into the Soviet Union in December 1922. Persisting internal tensions escalated into the brutal Russian Civil War. Following the coup, the Bolsheviks lead by Vladimir Lenin established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally guaranteed socialist state. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Provisional Government that formed earlier that year following the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, marking the end of the Russian Empire. It was the largest country in the world, covering over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi) and spanning eleven time zones. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev ( Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent ( Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata ( Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR.

A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.

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