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For half a century two of the world’s greatest superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were locked in bitter rivalry, which became known as the Cold War. When the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union no longer existed, even though the war never turned hot. What emerged were several republics broken apart, the main being Russia, to form independent states. Therefore we will examine the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and compare it with the current Russian state. The Soviet Union was a Federal system on paper, made of republics that supposedly joined voluntarily. There was a Politburo, twelve to fifteen members with another five to six nonvoting candidate members, which acted like a cabinet in a parliamentary system. Also, there was the Secretariat, twenty-five members who oversaw the work of the entire party. The General Secretary served as both the head of the Secretariat and chair of the Politburo, equivalent to a Prime Minister. This made up the main pieces of the formal government. The functioning of the government in reality was much different. The party controlled everything inside the government and also much in the personal lives of the people. Positions inside the party were filled by the Nomenklatura, a list of names of those determined by the party hierarchy to be able to fulfill certain positions.
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