Back in 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev is the head of the Soviet Union.
It is well regarded by Westerners because it ended the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, but internally, its economic and social reforms, the famous "perestroika", are contested.
Shortages are increasing.
Corruption and organized crime are on the rise.
In August, it is the putsch of Moscow.
While Mikhail Gorbachev prepares to sign a new treaty to give more autonomy to the 15 Union republics, the hard-line supporters of the Communist Party are rebelling.
They depose the Soviet president and tanks enter Moscow.
But the coup will fail, in large part thanks to one man: Boris Yeltsin, then President of the Republic of Russia.
And his speech against the junta, while he is perched on an armored vehicle, will change history.
Mikhail Gorbachev is back in office, but he is now weakened.
Boris Yeltsin is the new strong man.
It bans the activities of the Communist Party on Russian soil.
And one by one, the Soviet republics regain their independence.
On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation.
The Soviet flag no longer flies over the Kremlin.
>> Also see our return ticket: "In Russia, the impossible memory of the Soviet repressions"
Thirty years after the fall of the USSR, our reporters visited some of the former Soviet republics to measure how far they have come.
In Russia, of course, but also in Estonia, the Baltic country which now relies on high technology, in Ukraine, whose territory is divided in two, and in Georgia, where Russian influence is still present, through of religion.
We will even leave Earth, because the space race did not stop with the fall of the Soviet bloc.
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