The Collapse of the Soviet Union

1991 CE — Eurasia, Soviet Union

Today: The Soviet Union (Moscow)

A superpower that had seemed permanent dissolved almost overnight, its command economy exhausted and its guiding ideology believed by almost no one, including its own rulers — and it ended, remarkably, largely without the bloodbath such collapses usually bring. The story that justified the whole edifice simply ran out of credibility.

Worth knowing: The USSR was so certain of its own permanence that its collapse blindsided the CIA, the Soviet leadership, and even the dissidents — almost no one, anywhere, predicted the year it would fall.

Pattern: Legitimating-narrative collapse — The story that justifies an order (divine right, mandate, ideology) loses credibility; the order it propped up follows.

Entry 233 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.