In December 1991 the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate states. The formal dissolution of the union was a peculiar and relatively peaceful affair that happened in the course of four months following the August coup. The defeat of the coup shifted the power away from the Soviet government, still headed by Gorbachev, to Yeltsin, who as the president of Russia, the largest of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union, had no desire or ability to keep the Soviet empire together. The empire did not implode; it expired quietly as a result of a decision taken by its founding members and
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