sovjet-unie

Twelve of the fifteen national republics established their own Olympic Committees well before the official end of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The hammer-and-sickle flag flying over the Kremlin was lowered and the new flag of the Russian Federation was raised. The largest country in the world fell apart along the borders of the fifteen existing national republics, which declared independence. With the collapse of the USSR, there was no longer any