The USSR and the CCCP

I think in grade school I knew what the USSR was. It was right up there with the Devil himself. Then in high school I think I learned that the letters stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but I never really comprehended (was it just me or my history and geography books)that there were indeed individual republics like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow alone was reportedly quite a formidible enemy.

In all honesty, I really never knew why, when watching the Olympic games on telelvision, the athletes from the USSR had CCCP on their uniforms. Assuming that CCCP were Roman letters, too, I always wondered what were they calling their country during international competition?

Well, at long last, I have learned that CCCP are letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, too, and they pretty much stand for: Союз Советский Социалистический республиканский, which is Russian for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. By the way, R is P in the Russian language, but still sounds like an R (I think).