The books should emphasize the size of the Soviet Union because this had a differential in the bloc's power to influence.
The USSR was a bloc of Eastern European countries that became an empire of great geographical size under the influence of the communist system. After the second half of the twentieth century, the USSR disputed the hegemony of the world system against United States.
The USSR expanded its communist influence to countries such as Cuba, North Korea, China, while the US was the biggest prepulsor of capitalism. This dispute between two powers that infuenced much of the globe was called the Cold War. At the end of the 1980s the USSR collapsed financially and ended up forming several countries such as Russia, Ucracina, Romania, Bulgaria among others.
