paragraph_text: Italy became a major industrialized country again, due to its post-war economic miracle. The European Union (EU) involved the division of powers, with taxation, health and education handled by the nation states, while the EU had charge of market rules, competition, legal standards and environmentalism. The Soviet economic and political system collapsed, leading to the end of communism in the satellite countries in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. As a consequence, Europe's integration deepened, the continent became depolarised, and the European Union expanded to subsequently include many of the formerly communist European countries – Romania and Bulgaria (2007) and Croatia (2013).

paragraph_text: Lake Michigan has a surface area of 22,404 sq.mi (58,026 km2); (13,237 square miles, 34,284 km2 lying in Michigan state, 7,358 square miles, 19,056 km2 in Wisconsin, 234 square miles, 606 km2 in Indiana, & 1,576 square miles, 4,079 km2 in Illinois) making it the largest lake entirely within one country by surface area (Lake Baikal, in Russia, is larger by water volume), and the fifth-largest lake in the world. It is the larger half of Lake Michigan–Huron, which is the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area. It is 307 miles (494 km) long by 118 miles (190 km) wide with a shoreline 1,640 miles (2,640 km) long. The lake's average depth is 46 fathoms 3 feet (279 ft; 85 m), while its greatest depth is 153 fathoms 5 feet (923 ft; 281 m). It contains a volume of 1,180 cubic miles (4,918 km³) of water. Green Bay in the northwest is its largest bay. Grand Traverse Bay in its northeast is another large bay.  Lake Michigan's deepest region, which lies in its northern-half, is called Chippewa Basin (named after prehistoric Lake Chippewa) and is separated from South Chippewa Basin, by a relatively deeper area called the Mid Lake Plateau.

paragraph_text: At the Tehran Conference and the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War in two to three months after victory in Europe. On August 8, 1945, three months to the day after the end of hostilities in Europe, and two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Soviet troops advanced rapidly, and the US government became anxious that they would occupy the whole of Korea. On August 10, 1945 two young officers -- Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel -- were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would place the capital Seoul under American control. No experts on Korea were consulted. The two men were unaware that forty years before, Japan and pre-revolutionary Russia had discussed sharing Korea along the same parallel. Rusk later said that had he known, he ``almost surely ''would have chosen a different line. The division placed sixteen million Koreans in the American zone and nine million in the Soviet zone. To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the division. The agreement was incorporated into General Order No. 1 (approved on 17 August 1945) for the surrender of Japan.

paragraph_text: With an area of 2,700,000 square kilometres (1,000,000 sq mi) – equivalent in size to Western Europe – Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country and largest landlocked country in the world. While it was part of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan lost some of its territory to China's Xinjiang autonomous region and some to Uzbekistan's Karakalpakstan autonomous republic.

paragraph_text: Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991 in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. This ensured that Yeltsin would be the political leader of the Russian successor state following dissolution. This situation resulted in political turmoil as the Soviet and Russian leadership wrestled for control, which culminated in the 1991 August Putsch, where the Soviet military attempted to overthrow Gorbachev. Although the coup was ultimately averted, this situation contributed to rising instability in the Soviet Union. By October 1991, as the USSR was on the verge of collapse, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical reforms, including market - oriented reform along the lines of Poland's ``big bang '', also known as`` shock therapy''.

paragraph_text: By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making accommodations in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, inaugurating a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet -- Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983), and the ``Able Archer ''NATO military exercises (1983). The United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika (`` reorganization'', 1987) and glasnost (``openness '', c. 1985) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully (with the exception of the Romanian Revolution) overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse of communist regimes in other countries such as Mongolia, Cambodia and South Yemen. The United States remained as the world's only superpower.

paragraph_text: On 6 August 1940, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR. The provisions in the Estonian constitution requiring a popular referendum to decide on joining a supra-national body were ignored. Instead the vote to join the Soviet Union was taken by those elected in the elections held the previous month. Additionally those who had failed to do their "political duty" of voting Estonia into the USSR, specifically those who had failed to have their passports stamped for voting, were condemned to death by Soviet tribunals. The repressions followed with the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets in Estonia on 14 June 1941. Many of the country's political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas of the USSR by the Soviet authorities in 1940–1941. Repressive actions were also taken against thousands of ordinary people.

paragraph_text: Pojuschie Gitary ( , "The Singing Guitars") were the Soviet Union's first rock band to reach a phenomenal rate of success and popularity in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and in other countries. For that reason, they are often nicknamed "the Soviet Beatles" in a manner not that different from Hungary's Illés and Poland's Czerwone Gitary, whose name means "Red Guitars".

paragraph_text: Naina Yeltsina was rarely seen in public. She accompanied her husband on some of his foreign visits, including 1997 visits to Sweden, Finland, and a 1999 visit to China. As a rule, Naina Yeltsina never interfered in her husband's political work. However, in the 1996 election campaign, she met with voters and gave interviews to the media. A major public appearance was the state funeral of her late husband in Moscow in April 2007.

paragraph_text: Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil Portuguese pronunciation: (bɾaˈziw)), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help info)), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers (3.2 million square miles) and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth - largest country by area and the sixth most populous. The capital is Brasília, and the most populated city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, and the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas; it is also one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world.

paragraph_text: Finally returning to Azerbaijan in 1975, he became the acting secretary of the Caucasian Muslims Office, and Akhund and deputy chief of the Taza Pir Mosque in the Azerbaijani capital Baku. In 1980 he was elected chairman of the Caucasian Muslims Office and became Sheikh ul-Islam. After the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of Azerbaijan, in 1992, he was elected chairman of the Supreme Religious Board of Caucasian peoples of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Adygea.

paragraph_text: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a 780,000-man military force on its territory, equipped with the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. In May 1992, Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol in which the country agreed to give up all nuclear weapons to Russia for disposal and to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state. Ukraine ratified the treaty in 1994, and by 1996 the country became free of nuclear weapons.Ukraine took consistent steps toward reduction of conventional weapons. It signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which called for reduction of tanks, artillery, and armoured vehicles (army forces were reduced to 300,000). The country plans to convert the current conscript-based military into a professional volunteer military.

paragraph_text: After the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War the ships of the fleet became dispersed over various countries, and Soviet Russia made efforts via international courts to have them returned. Dobroflot was restored in the Soviet Union in 1922 and included into the Sovtorgflot ("Soviet Commercial Fleet") in 1925.

paragraph_text: Rank Country Area (km2) Notes Russia * 3,972,400 17,098,242 including North Asia Ukraine 603,628 This includes Crimea France * 551,394 643,801 when the overseas departments are included Spain * 498,468 505,992 when the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla are included Sweden 449,964 6 Norway 385,178 This includes Svalbard and Jan Mayen 7 Germany 357,168 8 Finland 338,145 9 Poland 312,685 10 Italy 301,338 11 United Kingdom 248,532 1,976,102 when the British Overseas Territories are included. 12 Romania 238,392 13 Belarus 207,600 14 Kazakhstan * 180,000 (est.) 2,724,902 including Asian part 15 Greece 131,940 16 Bulgaria 110,994 17 Iceland 102,775 18 Hungary 93,030 19 Portugal 91,568 20 Austria 83,858 21 Czech Republic 78,866 22 Serbia 77,453 This excludes Kosovo 23 Ireland 70,273 24 Lithuania 65,300 25 Latvia 64,589 26 Croatia 56,594 27 Bosnia and Herzegovina 51,129 28 Slovakia 49,036 29 Estonia 45,339 30 Denmark 44,493 This includes Faroe Islands; 2,210,579 including Greenland 31 Switzerland 41,290 32 Netherlands 41,198 Excluding Caribbean Netherlands, Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten. 33 Moldova 33,846 34 Belgium 30,510 35 Albania 28,748 36 Macedonia (Former Yugoslavian Republic) 25,713 37 Turkey * 23,507 783,562 including Asian part 38 Slovenia 20,273 39 Montenegro 13,812 40 Kosovo 10,908 Partially recognized state 41 Cyprus 9,251 42 Azerbaijan * 6,960 86,600 including Asian part 43 Luxembourg 2,586 44 Georgia * 2,428 69,700 including Asian part 45 Andorra 468 46 Malta 316 47 Liechtenstein 160 48 San Marino 61 49 Monaco 1.95 50 Vatican City 0.44 Total 10,141,183 ± 5,000

paragraph_text: The Aftermath of World War II was the beginning of an era defined by the decline of all great powers except for the Soviet Union and the United States, and the simultaneous rise of two superpowers: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America (USA). Allies during World War II, the USA and the USSR became competitors on the world stage and engaged in the Cold War, so called because it never resulted in overt, declared hot war between the two powers but was instead characterized by espionage, political subversion and proxy wars. Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereas Central and Eastern Europe fell under the Soviet sphere of influence and eventually an ``Iron Curtain ''. Europe was divided into a US - led Western Bloc and a Soviet - led Eastern Bloc. Internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. The Cold War also saw a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers; part of the reason that the Cold War never became a`` hot'' war was that the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear deterrents against each other, leading to a mutually assured destruction standoff.

paragraph_text: Crisis in the Kremlin is a 1991 strategy video game with managerial aspects in which the player acts as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 2017. The player assumes the role of the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, the nationalist Boris Yeltsin, or the hardliner Yegor Ligachev. Actual jokes recorded by the KGB can be found in the gameplay, depicting the concerns of the Soviet people in a humorous light. The game was developed and released at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and breaking apart with the game's events making reference to that. Indeed, the Soviet Union dissolved in the same year as the game's release.

paragraph_text: Free Union is a census-designated place (CDP) in Albemarle County, Virginia, United States, ten miles north-northwest of Charlottesville. The population as of the 2010 Census was 193. It is a very small hamlet consisting of a private school (Free Union Country School), a doctor's office, a post office, a country store, a homebuilder, and several dozen homes. Otherwise it is entirely rural in character. A few miles north of this hamlet is a winery.

paragraph_text: Skrunda-1, also known as Skrunda-2, is a ghost town and former Soviet radar station located 5 km (3 mi) to the north of Skrunda, in Raņķi Parish, Latvia. It was the site of two Dnepr radar (NATO "Hen House") radar installations constructed in the 1960s. A Daryal radar was being built there before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Skrunda was strategically important to the Soviet Union as its radars covered Western Europe. The two barn-like radars were one of the most important Soviet early warning radar stations for listening to objects in space and for tracking possible incoming ICBMs.

paragraph_text: Under the 1977 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was the head of government and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was the head of state. The office of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was comparable to a prime minister in the First World, whereas the office of the Chairman of the Presidium was comparable to a president in the First World. In the Soviet Union's seventy - year history there was no official leader of the Soviet Union office, but during most of that era there was a de facto top leader who usually led the country through the office of the Premier or the office of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In the ideology of Vladimir Lenin the head of the Soviet state was a collegiate body of the vanguard party (see What Is to Be Done?).

paragraph_text: As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered many of their citizens the chance to study in Russia. Over a period of 40 years, about 400,000 African students from various countries moved to Russia to pursue higher studies, including many Black Africans. This extended beyond the Soviet Union to many countries of the Eastern bloc.

Question: Where did the leader of the largest European country in square miles after the collapse of the Soviet Union die?
Answer: Moscow