How many Soviet republics were there?

A fish rots from the head!
And that's what happened to us...

There's an expression: "The saying that a fish rots from the head is a very convenient excuse for the tail"... I think we'll be able to talk normally about who's to blame and what happened, without political and other biases, only in about a hundred years (like now, more or less normal books/materials about Tsarist Russia are being published)... And right now, I think that only those who were born in the 60s and 70s can talk seriously about life in that country. Those who were born later only experienced their childhood and youth in the USSR, and that's not quite complete information...

Andrey +1 for everything, except for the last two sentences...