"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that
the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
![](http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/05/09/PH2008050900832.jpg)