Paul Goble
Staunton, May 9 – The "chief cause” of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was Stalin’s occupation of the Baltic countries, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Bessarabia, thus making what the Russian Federation celebrates today as a resounding triumph into "a Pyrrhic victory” for the country, according to a Russian blogger.
As one of the winners in World War II, the USSR insisted on retaining not only the territories it had occupied earlier during that conflict, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, portions of Poland, and part of Finland but also the northern portion of East Prussia which it renamed Kaliningrad.
Poland was compensated with German territory ...