Russia - [URSS] - Russia, by Anita Tiraspolsky From Nicolas II to Vladimir Poutine, Russia passed through many changes. To the tsarist empire succeeded the Union of the Soviet socialist republics. To Lenin's international revolutionary ambition succeeded Stalin's continental imperialism, and later on Khrouchtchev's and Brejnev's world imperialism. But the superpower "homeland of socialism" could not resist the explosion of the empire announced by the fall of Berlin's wall, in 1989 : in 1991, Russia was reborn, and a new page of Russian history was turned. But despite the specificities and tensions which are still shaking the country, bet- ween North and South, East and West, Christianity and Islam, Russia wants eventually to be integrated i...