Michel Garder was a French author and military man who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in the book L'Agonie du Regime en Russie Sovietique (The Death Struggle of the Regime in Soviet Russia) (1965). He set the date of the collapse as 1970.

The Death Struggle of the Regime in Soviet Russia

In his book, Garder stated that the death agony of the Soviet union was evident in "the conflict between a decaying regime that no longer has any justification other than the personal interests of those who profit by it" and "the upper strata of the technological intelligentsia."

Garder argued that this contest cannot end in a compromise. There is not enough flexibility in the dictatorship. He then predicted a collapse: probably a non-communist and perhaps anti-communist take-over with the help of the military elites. "Recognition of the harebrained absurdity of a Marxist-Leninist religion has long ago become inevitable for the true elite of the country and is from day to day dawning upon millions of "average persons." There will come a moment when the technological masses "will feel impelled to seize power."

Experts dismiss the book

In a symposium launched to review the book, Yale Professor Frederick C. Barghoorn dismissed Garders book as "the latest in a long line of apocalyptic predictions of the collapse of communism." He warns that "great revolutions are most infrequent and that successful political systems are tenacious and adaptive." In addition, the reviewer of the book, Michael Tatu, disapproved of the "apocalyptic character" of such a forecast and is almost apologetic for treating it seriously.