Russia's imperial agony

摘要

The dying process has begun", wrote Alexander Kugel, a journalist and theatre critic, a few months after the bloody Bolshevik revolution of 1917. "Everything that we see now is just part of the agony. Bolshevism is the death of Russia. And a body the size of Russia cannot die in one hour. It groans." The agony lasted over 70 years. On December 25th 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev, on television, relinquished his duties as the last president of the ussr.