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In its final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR), often called simply Soviet republics. Within the USSR they were also called union republics ( soyuznye respubliki). All of them were socialist republics, and all of them, with the exception of Russia had their own Communist parties, part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They are all independent countries now; 12 of them (all except the Baltic states) are very loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States.