Russians’ regret over passing of USSR into history

Nationalism, ultimately that of the Russian variety, led to the break-up of the Soviet Union. To this day, it is the Russians, ironically, who have come to regret the USSR passing into history the most

A man dressed in a pre-revolutionary military costume burns a Soviet flag during a rally in Moscow following a failed coup led by hardliner communists in 1991. File photo: Dimitri Korotayev/AFP via Getty Images

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 was the culmination of an astonishing sequence of events that began in 1985 with Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment as leader of the Soviet communist party. 

The communist-controlled, one-party state dominated Soviet economic and cultural life as well as the country’s politics. Gorbachev aimed to use that power to shift Soviet socialism out of stagnation and to make the system both more popular and more dynamic.