ABSTRACT
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was the first socialist state, one pole of the cold war and the one of the largest empires in the modern world, collapsed in 1991. There is no doubt that it is a challenging subject for all social scientists, including historians, to investigate what the Soviet system was, why and how it collapsed. Many analyses have already been advanced around this subject. The purpose of this book is also to contribute to an understanding of the collapse of the USSR.
