Fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago today on Christmas

By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer
Blog: People Places & Things

LAKE MARY, Fla. -- Today is a very important date in the history of the world. On Dec. 26, 1991, the Soviet Union, no longer existed.

All of 16 of the republics that made up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR, were now independent, sovereign nations.

They include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The two main antagonists were Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin, head of the Russian Republic.  

As Americans, we are clueless as to how the Soviets were able to keep such a diversified group of ethnicities, religions, and cultural differences as one, much like Tito did with the former Yugoslavia.

And think about the Boston Marathon bombing eight years ago and where the bombing suspect siblings Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev came from -- Daghestan. The territory in Western Russia and near another violent hot spot, Chechnya.

The seeds of future Jihad were in these locales. Perhaps we can begin rot appreciate how difficult it was for the Russians, the dominant Soviet machine, to contain, these violent Jihadists, bent on world domination and destruction of the West.