To the question of multinational states development after the World War II

The article reviews the issues of development and formation of the preconditions of the dissolution of the USSR. It is marked that the given events took place against the background of geopolitical changes in Eastern Europe: dissolution of the Yugoslavia as a union state, factual division of Czechoslovakia into two states. Special attention is paid to the contents of discussions on the issues of national state formation in the Soviet period. The author reviews the role of M.S. Gorbachev in counteracting the secession processes in this country.