Hello Everybody,

To all my Russian friends in Fidonet -

HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY since the end of the Soviet Union.

That's right. The evening of December 25, 1991 the Soviet
flag over the Kremlin was pulled down and replaced by the
Russian Federation's tricolor flag.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had announced his
resignation minutes earlier in a live televised address
to the nation. And that was the end of 74 years of what
had once been known as the USSR.

"I still regret that I failed to bring the ship under
my command to calm waters, failed to complete reforming
the country."
~ Mikhail Gorbachev, in his memoirs

It really wasn't all his fault. The leaders of Russia,
Ukraine, and Belarus had met in a hunting lodge on December
8 and declared the USSR dead. Other Soviet republics soon
joined in, and the obvious soon could not be denied by
Gorbachev himself.

So that was that.

Of course, when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
declared the USSR defunct, they had absolutely no earthly idea
of what would happen next.

What were those four million Soviet soldiers going to do
without a job? And what to do with all those nuclear missiles?
Somebody had to keep track of where they were, and what to do
with them.

"The breakup of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a
historic Russia. We lost 40% of the territory, production
capacities and population. We became a different country.
What had been built over a millennium was lost to a large
extent."
~ Vladimir Putin, in a documentary that aired on Russian
television in December 2021

That is what happens when 15 republics each decide to go
their own way.

Why does the population of Russia continue to decline, even
after the other republics split away? Could it be that Russian
women are getting too old to make babies?

Maybe that question would best remain unanswered ...

--Lee

--
Probably the best beer in the world

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* Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)