Dear comrade, my dear friend, I regret to inform you that our beloved Soviet society has ceased to exist. Our solid red flag with its magnificent golden emblem of the hammer and sickle flew for the last time above the Kremlin on Christmas Day 1991. Before this gloomy day, eleven of the fifteen Soviet republics that once constituted the strong and prosperous Soviet Union gathered in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, to announce that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union and had created a Community of Independent States. Our Baltic brothers: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were the first to secede, while Georgia remained the last republic of the Soviet Union. I served the Soviet Union as Minister of Foreign Affairs for nearly two decades, and in recent days I have reflected on the past to understand why our powerful society dissolved. I wonder whether it was because of Comrade Mikhail Gorbachev and his new policies, the ethnic divisions of the Soviet Union, or whether this communist ideology that we tried to implant in the minds and hearts of our people simply failed to firmly place roots. The beautiful Soviet society was born in 1917, with the Bolshevik Revolution leading to the creation of a new government that would focus on socialism and eventually morph into communism. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsarist autocracy succeeding the lands of the Russian Empire, ultimately leading to the glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the control of Marxist revolutionary and first leader of the USSR Vladimir Lenin. For centuries, the tsarist autocracy oppressed its people, despite the Soviet Union's goal of creating a society of true democracy. The sad truth was that it was a tyranny... middle of paper... in the office on December 25, 1991. To my surprise, this enormous military power that we called the USSR, which created enormous bloodbaths and created a constant sense of fear and terror, had somehow come to a very peaceful end. Because what had held many Republics together no longer exists, it was the glue that kept us together to remain united. Now we remain in 15 republics with the arduous task of creating economies, social and political organizations that lead us towards a democratic future. I feel like my world has been turned upside down, as I no longer feel repressed or forced to live in fear. I am excited for what the future holds, as I see a new peaceful beginning in a world that has seen so much hate, disorder and been bathed in blood. Kind regards, Joe Doe