The article presents the author’s reflections in connection with the book by an American political scientist Steven Cohen. The Russian-language version of it, on which the author reflects, has the title reading as «’Cardinal Question’: Why the Soviet Union Ceased to Exist». It was published this year in St. Petersburg and Moscow by efforts of the Association of Researchers of Russian Society – XXI, and of the Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina-Bukharina Foundation. The author of the book sees the reason of the disintegration of the USSR in incongruity of the means, which were at the disposal of M.S.Gorbachev with the purposes set, namely: the course of social-democratic transformations and the mode of reforming the country «from above», by forces of the party and Soviet apparatus. The collapse of the Soviet Union is the consequence of weakness of reformatory forces of the social-democratic trend, as well as of the social chaos that emerged in the country at the turning point from the 1980s to the 1990s. This chaos was exploited by nationalists from Soviet Republics’ elites and by the Yeltsin group.