Seventy years of Marxism and communist rule have receded, much like an ice-age glacier, leaving behind a ravaged and broken Soviet Union economy, according to a prominent NIU professor.

Professor Albert Resis, a specialist in Russian history at NIU, said that the republics of the Soviet Union might find themselves in severe economic turmoil and political strife if they continue to declare independence and secede from the union.

“Dissolving the union between the republics may only exasperate the problems,” he said.

The union originally dates back to the 15th century when much of the region was bonded together under the banner of the Russian Empire, Resis said.

The empire declined with the end of the Czars’ rule during the early 1900s, Resis said. However, Vladimir Lenin was eventually able to put the empire back together after the Bolshevik revolution, which installed communism in the empire, Resis said.

Each republic has its own Supreme Soviet which makes each state capable of functioning on its own, he said.

“There is a passion for independence in the Soviet republics,” Resis said. “They were not prosperous at all as individual states. Their economies were built by the Russian empire and were bonded by dictatorship by the 1920s.”

Resis said the Soviet Union is comprised of over 140 nationalities and 40 religions, but the central Russian government ran the country down to the local level.

“There was no chance for nationalism in the last 70 years. It was a pressure-cooker and now the lid is off,” he said.

Resis said that many of the republics wish to dissolve the union entirely, even the economic links.

“It’s as if supposing the United States set up border guards around each state, and every time you went across or exported something you had to pay a tax,” he said.

“Gorbachev is desperately trying to keep together an economic consistency,” Resis said.

Resis said that Gorbachev’s Union Treaty, which was scheduled to be signed on the day of the failed coup, would have reorganized the government into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics.

The treaty would have given more power to the republics, while still maintaining economic and political bonds, Resis said. However, since the failed coup attempt, opposition to the treaty has grown.

Resis said the treaty was a weak alliance, but a bond between the states.

He compared the treaty with the Articles of Confederation which bonded the United States together after the American Revolution.

Resis said many of the Soviet republics would discover economic hardship if the union were to dissolve.