Here's the standard high school history class summary of the Soviet Union: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a communist state from 1922 to 1991 and was a big rival of the US from WWII to the end of the '80s. But what was the Soviet Union really like? What was it like living in the Soviet Union? That same history class probably told you that it was awful, but it's a lot more complicated than that.