[This week marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Yuri Maltsev. Dr. Maltsev had been an economist in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, and defected to the United States in 1989. This article is an adaptation of a lecture written by Dr. Maltsev for the 2011 Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, Alabama.]
The opening lines of the state anthem of the USSR went as such: “An unbreakable union of free republics, Great Rus has united forever. Long live the created by the will of the peoples, the united, the mighty Soviet Union.”
But, indeed, it was not unbreakable. Twenty years ago, it broke apart spectacularly. Why do empires like the Soviet Union look so formidable and insurmountable—and even eternal—yet turn out to be so fragile? Indeed, how fragile all empires have been and are
2024-01-25
Unbreakable Union: Lessons Learned from the Demise of the Soviet Union
