The Soviet Union dissolves
An empire disappears without a war
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The dissolution came from a coincidence of causes: an economy that no longer worked, glasnost permitting criticism, and national movements in the republics. The transition to a market economy was brutal — life expectancy for Russian men fell by several years during the 1990s. Nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were transferred to Russia in exchange for security assurances in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
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The Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, and fifteen new countries became independent. It happened almost without fighting — rare in history for an empire of that size. The Cold War was over.
Sources
- Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (2014)
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