| Summary/Abstract |
THE REASONS behind the breakup of the USSR have been discussed in a lot of research papers, which, stacked together, could reach the Moon. However, few authors noted that, apart from the economic and political reasons behind this breakup, it was civilizational incompatibility of the country's separate parts that greatly impacted the disintegration of the USSR. On the one hand, the Soviet Union comprised Western-style modern Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Novosibirsk, Kiev, Kharkov, Lvov, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Tbilisi, and Yerevan, while on the other, Central Asia, Azerbaijan (except for the cosmopolitan Baku), Islamic enclaves of the North Caucasus and Volga region, all of which outwardly accepted the Soviet way of life, while continuing to live under the medieval Sharia laws. The 15th and 20th centuries have been forcefully united in one state which has dumped the old deities, elevated the new ones as personified by communist leaders and declared the victory of atheism.
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