ABSTRACT
The banning of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the elimination of communism as a state creed, and the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as an imperial formation marked in a deep sense the ending of the Soviet era. But in part because of the abruptness with which these events came about, much of the statist Soviet system and its political culture survived into the 1990s. Even before the Soviet order collapsed in 1991 and the fifteen "socialist republics" constituting the USSR became so many separate states, some Russians saw the advent of a new Time of Troubles. The imperial Russian state had fallen apart twice before in its history, and it was happening again. Under the CPSU administrative command system, Soviet statehood was unitary behind a facade of federalism comprising fifteen supposedly sovereign union republics and a larger number of supposedly autonomous republics within them.
