USSR: creation and collapse of the empire in the context of «risk society»

The article identifies and analyzes the risk factors associated with the formation and collapse of the USSR as a recreation of the Imperial political and legal space, a type of national and supranational socio-political and legal identity. The authors consider the various processes of integration and disintegration of state actors in the context of the “risk society” paradigm, recognizing its methodological foundations. Both the emergence and collapse of the USSR are responses to the escalating risks and crises of the Russian political and legal systems, and a way out. When considering such problems, it is impossible to eliminate mental and cultural archetypes, historic state and legal experience, and the place and role of personality in history, especially within the nation’s contradictory history. In this regard, the article analyzes the positions of leadership of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR in the matter of national legal policy that influenced the collapse of the USSR.