High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republicsof the Soviet Union were ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. Historically a highly centralized state, the decentralization and democratization reforms during the era of Perestroika and Glasnost conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the Dissolution of the USSR. According to the Article 76 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the sovereign Soviet socialist states united to become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".