About the book: 2012 / The book is dedicated to the problems faced by authoritarian regimes in multi-ethnic states, whose economies are largely dependent on unpredictable fluctuations in fuel prices energy resources. This problem is relevant for modern Russia, and the author explains what mistakes made by the Soviet Union should not be repeated. The uniqueness of the book is that Yegor Gaidar for the first time clearly shows how the policy of collectivization, which ruined our agriculture, predetermined the accelerated collapse of the Soviet regime, which by that time had become de facto bankrupt, in just over sixty years. What was the real economic situation of an apparently powerful superpower, was the collapse of the USSR absolutely inevitable, was it possible to dismantle the Soviet system in any other way and why the Chinese or Latin American path of transformation was impossible in Russia - you will find the answers to these questions in “The Death of an Empire””.