In the news today...

Colonel Putin seems to believe that the old Soviet Union was the greatest invention since sliced bread or gunpowder, and he also seems to have a selective memory of the past history of the Soviet Union. Reading the history of changes in leadership one is impressed with the similarity to the power struggles experienced in a gang of mobsters, whose leaders typically came to violent ends. Being a leader of the old Soviet Union was not usually synonymous with a long and comfortable old age, and President Putin will be 62 in October.
That is most often a time of life for thinking about retirement rather than empire building. And the Soviet Union was dissolved because the member states wanted more freedom to make their own decisions.