The Soviet Empire lasted almost 7 decades before collapsing under its weight. The multiple factors leading to its demise were anchored in the coercively dictatorial political system, raw exploitation of the natural resources of the Soviet Republics by the Kremlin and the highly bureaucratized Marxist economic system. Though the Soviet leadership was well conscious of the inherent political and economic weaknesses of their socialist empire, they remained embroiled in a multi-dimensional rivalry with the West with intensified political, economic, cultural and military contests in the various regions of the globe. As rightly put it by Ms. Margret Thatcher in her ‘Path to Power’, they lost this war across the board in 1990. The architect of the political and economic reforms known as perestroika and Glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev, admits that when he took-over power, the country reminded him of an overheated boiler with the lid tightly closed. His perestroika and glasnost aimed at creating a political and economic system based on the rule of law, openness, democracy and decentralization, autonomy of the Socialist Republics, economic liberalization and free entrepreneurship. All this meant renouncing the monopoly of the power held by the Communist Partyin favour of political pluralism. Gorbachev believed ‘so long as the authoritarian bureaucratic system was preserved, all attempts to improve political and economic conditions would, in the final analysis, prove futile’. Mr. Gorbachev knew this central point of reforming a society and had the needed courage. But his colleagues did not have that spirit and that precise knowledge. He knew that the most difficult task of a leader is to change the attitude of people; to close the past and open the future. However, in his sincere attempt to introduce openness or glasnost in the highly centralized Soviet society, he failed to open the tightly closed lid of the overheated boiler, skillfully. He failed to grasp the consequences of opening this flood gate. There was a tumult of political events beyond his imagination faster than the pace of perestroika and glasnost. This rush of events stirred by his over ambitious Socialist colleagues and encouraged by the Western leaders overtook the gradual change his perestroika and glasnost had envisioned to bring, creating trepidations in the mini world from Oxus River to the Russian Steppes, Baltic Sea and the Central and Western Europe, and threatening to displace over 75 million ethnic populations from the former Soviet satellite states. In the words of Margret Thatcher, “The part of the world that emerged from the Soviet iron curtains had many of the features of the Europe of 1914 and 1939 – ethnic strife, contested borders, political extremism, nationalist passions and economic backwardness. There were many hands to fan this chaos. Gorbachev was alone trying to contain it. From 1985 to 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev worked hard to give a human face to the highly authoritative Soviet Union introducing political pluralism and democratization, and dismantling the bureaucratic Marxist structure of the economy liberalizing and restructuring it on free entrepreneurship, foreign partnership and market system. He was fully engaged with the world leaders to ease the cold war tensions in Europe and elsewhere. His reorientation of the Soviet foreign policy from hostility to cooperation between the two Socialist and Capitalist camps – was well received by the USA and the Western leaders, albeit with some lingering signs of distrust in the moves and pledges of the new Soviet leadership. He closely interacted with his peers in Europe and the USA to bridge this gulf of mistrust he inherited from the past years of competition and tension. The post-Soviet Union conditions in the Russian Federation reflected a painfully long and deep political crisis – a steep economic fall, a weak and a directionless leadership The evolving cooperation between the two camps was quite perceptible on the crisis of Afghanistan, the Middle East and the issue of disarmament which aimed at reducing by 50% the conventional forces and correcting imbalance in the offensive weapons, strategic arsenal and renouncing the manufacture of biological weapons. His talks on the liberalization of trade and investment with the USA had also progressed well. Finally, he was even able to sign treaties on disarmament and trade and investment with the US in 1990. His reoriented foreign and security policies combined with the domestic political and economic reforms would have taken the Soviet Union in a diametrically different direction and we would have still lived in a bipolar world with two super powers countervailing each other. This could not happen not because of his political and strategic mistakes but due mainly to the ambitions of his power hungry colleagues including Boris Yeltsin. The post-Soviet Union conditions in the Russian Federation reflected a painfully long and deep political crisis – a steep economic fall, a weak and a directionless leadership. Boris Yeltsin found himself quite incapable of dealing with the unfolding events. Gorbachev had set in motion a trail of political freedom and economic liberalization. It was impossible to reverse the process. Boris Yeltsin and his colleagues being product of the authoritative Soviet system, could not measure up to the growing public hunger for democratic and economic reforms. The old guards in the security and bureaucratic apparatus were reluctant to overcome their deep-seated addiction to authoritative rule. There was a constant conflict between the forces of reform and the old system. The country slipped from one political crisis to another. The economy was taken over by mafia-like groups siphoning the wealth of the country and transferring their loot to safe financial havens. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a brainchild of Boris Yeltsin and his Ukrainian and Belarusian colleagues replacing the Gorbachev’s proposition for Union of Sovereign States could not take off. On the contrary, the Russian Federation came to grapple with a growing threat of further territorial dismemberment posed by the violent secessionist movements of the Muslim Republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. The Muslims constitute 15% of the Russian population of 142 million. The country struggled with these political, economic and security problems for almost one decade. The second tenure of the sick and alcoholic Boris Yeltsin was a disaster. The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books