December 26, 2025 — 34 years since the fall of an empire
Today marks the anniversary of one of history’s most significant moments. On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—a superpower that had shaped global politics for nearly seven decades, possessed thousands of nuclear weapons, and controlled the lives of hundreds of millions of people across eleven time zones was formally dissolved.
What seemed unthinkable at the beginning of 1991 became reality by its end. An empire built over 70 years collapsed in twelve months.
For those who lived under Soviet rule, who immigrated to free countries like Canada, and who now watch Ukraine fight against the successor to that empire, December 26 carries profound meaning. It reminds us that tyranny is not permanent, that empires fall, and that the human spirit’s longing for freedom cannot be extinguished.
As we move through the Christmas season—a time of hope, renewal, and light overcoming darkness—I want to share ten lessons from the Soviet collapse and ten reasons for hope as Ukraine continues its fight for freedom.
PART ONE: Ten Reasons Why the Soviet Union Collapsed
1. Economic Stagnation and Systemic Failure
The Soviet economy had been declining throughout the 1980s. The centrally planned system could not innovate, could not meet consumer needs, and could not compete with Western market economies. Store shelves were empty. Technology lagged decades behind. The joke circulated: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
By the late 1980s, GDP was contracting, oil prices had collapsed, and the Soviet Union could no longer afford both guns and butter. An empire cannot sustain military commitments and global ambitions when its economic foundation crumbles. The contradiction between superpower pretensions and everyday poverty became impossible to ignore.
2. The Afghanistan Disaster
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 became Moscow’s Vietnam—a decade-long quagmire that cost thousands of lives, billions of rubles, and whatever remained of Soviet moral authority. Young men returned in zinc coffins. Veterans came home traumatized and disillusioned. Mothers formed protest movements demanding answers.
Afghanistan demonstrated that the mighty Red Army could be resisted, that a determined people fighting for their homeland could outlast a superpower. This lesson was not lost on other nations within the Soviet sphere—or on Ukrainians today.
3. Information Penetration and the End of the Propaganda Monopoly
Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) policy revealed the vast gap between Soviet propaganda and reality. For the first time, citizens could read honest accounts of Stalin’s crimes, the Chernobyl disaster, and the failures of the system. Radio Liberty, BBC, and Voice of America broadcasts reached millions.
Once people knew the truth, they could not unknow it. The regime’s legitimacy depended on controlling information, and when that control broke, legitimacy evaporated. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”
4. National Consciousness Survived Decades of Suppression
Despite seventy years of Russification, deportations, artificial famines, and cultural suppression, Ukrainians remained Ukrainian, Lithuanians remained Lithuanian, Georgians remained Georgian. The Soviet policy of creating “Homo Sovieticus”—a new Soviet person without national identity—failed completely.
The moment central control weakened, national movements emerged with stunning speed and strength. In Ukraine, Rukh mobilized millions. In the Baltics, human chains stretched across three countries. National identity proved more durable than any imperial structure.
5. The Courage of Small Nations Led the Way
Estonia declared sovereignty in November 1988—the first Soviet republic to do so. Lithuania declared full independence in March 1990. Latvia followed in May. These small Baltic nations, with populations of just a few million, showed that resistance was possible.
The Baltic Way of August 23, 1989—when two million people joined hands across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—demonstrated the power of peaceful mass resistance. Courage proved contagious. Each act of defiance inspired others.
6. Elite Defection and Loss of True Believers
By the late 1980s, even Communist Party members had stopped believing in the system. When the August 1991 coup attempt occurred, military units refused orders to storm the Russian White House. Tank commanders defected to Yeltsin’s side. Local party leaders burned their membership cards.
A regime survives only as long as its enforcers believe in it—or at least fear the consequences of disobedience. When elites concluded that the system was doomed, they began positioning themselves for what came next rather than defending what existed.
7. The Chernobyl Catalyst
The nuclear disaster of April 26, 1986, exposed everything wrong with the Soviet system: the culture of secrecy that delayed evacuation, the incompetence that caused the accident, the lies told to the population, and the callous disregard for human life.
Gorbachev himself later said that Chernobyl, “even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The disaster shattered the myth of Soviet technological prowess and revealed a system that would sacrifice its own people to preserve its image.
8. International Pressure and Isolation
The free world’s sustained pressure on the Soviet Union—economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, the arms race, support for dissidents, moral condemnation—imposed real costs. President Reagan’s military buildup forced Moscow to spend resources it could not afford. The Helsinki Accords created frameworks for human rights monitoring.
International solidarity with oppressed nations kept hope alive inside the Soviet empire. When Polish Solidarity emerged, when dissidents like Sakharov spoke out, they knew the world was watching and supporting them.
9. The Demonstration Effect of Eastern European Freedom
The fall of Communist governments across Eastern Europe in 1989—Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania—showed Soviet citizens that change was possible. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and the psychological wall of fear fell with it.
If Poles could be free, if Germans could reunite, if Czechs could have their Velvet Revolution, then surely Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Georgians could also choose their own futures. Example proved more powerful than any propaganda.
10. The Referendum That Backfired
Gorbachev called the March 1991 referendum hoping to legitimize continued union. Instead, it accelerated dissolution. The Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova refused to participate. In Ukraine, voters gave their leaders a mandate to negotiate a new arrangement—which ultimately meant independence.
When Ukraine held its own independence referendum on December 1, 1991, over 90% voted yes—including majorities in every region, even Crimea, even Donbas. The democratic voice of the people delivered the final verdict on empire.
PART TWO: Ten Reasons for Hope Today
1. Ukraine Still Stands
Nearly four years after the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022, Ukraine has not fallen. The Russian military that was supposed to capture Kyiv in three days has been fought to a standstill. Ukrainian courage has defied every prediction of quick defeat.
This resilience is not just military—it is spiritual, cultural, and national. Ukraine has demonstrated to the world that a free people defending their homeland can resist a larger aggressor. This truth, once demonstrated, cannot be unlearned.
2. The Russian Economy Is Under Unprecedented Pressure
Western sanctions represent the most comprehensive economic restrictions ever imposed on a major economy. Russia has been cut off from global financial systems, advanced technology, and Western markets. The ruble’s stability is artificial, maintained only through capital controls and unsustainable central bank interventions.
The long-term trajectory is clear: Russia cannot modernize its economy, cannot replace advanced technology, and cannot sustain war spending indefinitely. Economic pressure that contributed to Soviet collapse is being applied with even greater intensity today.
3. Demographic Catastrophe Accelerates
Russia faces a demographic crisis that no policy can reverse. Birth rates have collapsed. Educated young people flee the country—estimates suggest over one million have emigrated since 2022. War casualties, while officially hidden, number in the hundreds of thousands.
A country cannot sustain imperial ambitions when its population shrinks, ages, and leaves. The human capital that empires require is draining away from Russia at unprecedented rates.
4. International Isolation Deepens
Russia has become a pariah state, dependent on a shrinking circle of authoritarian allies. The country has been expelled from international organizations, its assets frozen, its leaders indicted by international courts. Cultural, academic, and sporting isolation compounds economic pressure.
The Soviet Union at least had an ideological bloc of allied states and genuine believers in its system worldwide. Today’s Russia offers nothing but crude authoritarianism and imperial nostalgia—an ideology that inspires no one.
5. Information Warfare Favors the Truth
Despite Russia’s massive propaganda apparatus, the truth about the war reaches Russian citizens through VPNs, Telegram channels, and social media. Mothers learn about their sons’ deaths despite official silence. Videos of Russian military failures circulate despite censorship.
The information environment is fundamentally different from 1991—and it favors those telling the truth. Every Ukrainian victory, every Russian atrocity exposed, every soldier’s testimony undermines the Kremlin’s narrative.
6. The Empire’s Subject Nations Are Watching
Within the Russian Federation, ethnic minorities—Tatars, Bashkirs, Buryats, Chechens, and dozens of others—bear disproportionate war casualties while receiving few benefits from Moscow. Regional inequalities grow. The federal structure that theoretically grants autonomy is hollow, but the structures for potential independence exist.
These nations remember their own histories of conquest and resistance. They watch Ukraine’s fight and draw their own conclusions. When central power weakens, as it eventually must, centrifugal forces will accelerate.
7. Military Defeat Exposes the Lie of Russian Power
The Russian military—supposedly the second most powerful in the world—has been exposed as corrupt, poorly led, and technologically backward. The myth of Russian military invincibility, cultivated since World War II, has been shattered in Ukrainian fields.
This matters because authoritarian regimes derive legitimacy from strength. When that strength is revealed as hollow, when military parades give way to mobilization of prisoners and desperate human wave attacks, the regime’s core claim to power dissolves.
8. Global Solidarity with Ukraine Continues
Despite fatigue, despite political changes, despite Russian efforts to divide the West, international support for Ukraine continues. Military aid flows. Humanitarian assistance arrives. Diplomatic support holds. Millions of ordinary people worldwide have welcomed Ukrainian refugees, donated to relief efforts, and advocated for continued support.
In Kamloops, British Columbia, we have gathered every Saturday since February 24, 2022—over 150 consecutive weeks—to stand with Ukraine. Similar vigils occur in cities across the globe. This solidarity sustained pressure on the Soviet Union and sustains pressure on its successor today.
9. History Is on the Side of Freedom
Every empire in history has fallen. The Soviet Union fell. The British Empire dissolved. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. The Ottoman Empire ended. There are no exceptions.
The Russian Federation, as it currently exists, is historically anomalous—the last major European land empire, attempting to maintain 19th-century imperial control in the 21st century. History’s verdict on such arrangements is clear and consistent.
10. Ukrainians Will Never Give Up
The most important reason for hope is the Ukrainian people themselves. They have chosen freedom, chosen Europe, chosen to fight rather than submit. This choice, made collectively and individually, millions of times over, cannot be reversed by any external force.
A nation that produces defenders like those at Mariupol’s Azovstal, volunteers who left comfortable lives abroad to fight, grandmothers who face down soldiers with sunflower seeds—such a nation cannot be conquered. It can only be temporarily occupied, and occupation always ends.
Conclusion: What December 26 Teaches Us
The Soviet Union collapsed because empires eventually exhaust themselves—economically, militarily, morally, and spiritually. The forces that brought down that empire are present in today’s Russia, intensified by the catastrophic decision to invade Ukraine.
We do not know when the current Russian regime will fall or what will replace it. History teaches us that the timing of collapse is unpredictable even as its eventual occurrence is certain. The Soviet Union seemed stable in January 1991 and was gone by December.
What we do know is that our actions matter. Every voice raised for Ukraine, every donation made, every political leader pressured to maintain support, every vigil held in solidarity—all of it contributes to the pressure that makes change possible.
Christmas is a season of hope, not naive optimism but deep conviction that light overcomes darkness, that new life emerges from the bleakest winter, that what seems impossible becomes possible in God’s time.
On this December 26, let us remember that empires fall, that freedom endures, and that Ukraine’s fight today continues the unfinished work of 1991.
Все буде Україна. 🇺🇦
Join us every Saturday at 3:00 PM near Kamloops City Hall to Stand with Ukraine. Together, we keep hope alive.
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