Definition: In this task, you will be presented with a passage and have to answer a question based on your understanding of the events inferred from the passage. Try to find the best answer that is most likely to fill in "_". Note that the URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
Input: London, England (CNN) -- A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the ghost of Communism past. Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet-backed communist governments across the bloc, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, support for multiparty democracy has fallen in almost every country in the region, according to a wide-ranging new study. Majorities still support democracy over communism in all but one of the nine countries in the survey, but only two nations have seen a rise in approval for democracy. And support for capitalism as an economic system has fallen in every single country surveyed. Eastern Europeans do embrace democracy and capitalism in principle, one of the survey directors said, but they are frustrated in practice.Study: Most support democracy over communism in all but one of nine countriesBut support for capitalism has fallen in all countries surveyedEastern Europeans see gap between how they want things to work, how they actually workJust less than half of Russians say it is "natural for Russia to have an empire" 
 Question:The Soviet Union itself collapsed at the end of 1991 as its constituent republics, including Russia, declared independence from the _ state.

Soviet