The USSR officially ceased to exist on 31 December 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991 changed the world’s geopolitical balance. When the Soviet Union fell, it ended the tenure of a superpower with the resources of more than a dozen countries.
The fall left its largest component, Russia, unable to wield anything like the global clout that the Soviet Union had for decades. The concluding drama of the Cold War -- the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the end of the four-decade-old East-West conflict – unfolded in three acts between 1989 and 1991.
These photographs below were taken in 1990-1991 by photographers George Steinmetz and Peter Turnley who visited the country at that hard time.
The fall left its largest component, Russia, unable to wield anything like the global clout that the Soviet Union had for decades. The concluding drama of the Cold War -- the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the end of the four-decade-old East-West conflict – unfolded in three acts between 1989 and 1991.
These photographs below were taken in 1990-1991 by photographers George Steinmetz and Peter Turnley who visited the country at that hard time.
