UN General Assembly
1991

It may be rash, but I believe that we are now watching the collapse of the principle of empire. By that, I mean the principle that people can be forced to work together under a central rule in which they do not themselves participate and which has no respect for their rights. In some places the end of this principle of empire is coming slowly. In others its collapse has been sudden. For example we are seeing beyond doubt the disintegration of the last of the great colonial empires of the last century, namely, that put together by the Russian Tsars. That system, which was transformed into a communist empire by Lenin and Stalin, is now smashed for good - and smashed not by its critics or competitors from outside but by the peoples whom it sought to imprison. That old system has gone; a new system is struggling to birth. The new system tries to accommodate the principle of national identity without following that principle into anarchy.