The Russian Federation

When the Soviet dissident Andrey Amalrik in 1969 published his famous book Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? the question he posed in the title seemed provocative and purely rhetoric. However, 22 years after the publication of this book and only seven years later than he predicted, the Soviet Union became a historical issue. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was followed by a heated debate on the causes of its demise and on the inability of the 'Sovietologist community' to predict this dramatic event. The failed August 1991 coup was identified as one of the most important immediate causes of the collapse. With its tenth anniversary approaching, the Centre for Russian Studies at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) decided in summer 2001 to join forces and organise a conference devoted to this historical event and the consequences it has had for developments in what later became known as 'the post-Soviet space'. This book is our - and our speakers' - voice in this debate on the reasons and consequences of the unexpected end of the Soviet Union.