In the last decade of the 20th century as the Soviet Empire disintegrated, so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe.

The spirit of secession, the desire of people to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon.

What are the forces pulling nations apart? Ethnicity, culture, history and language — but now also economics. And separatist and secessionist movements are cropping up here in the United States.

While many Red State Americans are moving away from Blue State America, seeking kindred souls, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.

Five counties of Western Maryland, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.

The issues driving secession in Maryland are gun control, high taxes, energy policy, homosexual marriage and immigration. And there is precedent. Four of our 50 states — Maine, Vermont, Kentucky and West Virginia — were born out of other states.

Ten northern counties of Colorado are this November holding non-binding referenda to prepare a future secession from Denver and the creation of America’s 51st state.

Their issues with Denver’s leaders: A new gun-control law that triggered a voter recall of two Democrat state senators, state restrictions on oil exploration and Colorado’s party-line vote in support of gay marriage.

In California, which many have long believed should be split in two, the northern counties of Modoc and Siskyou on the Oregon border are talking succession — and then union in a new state called Jefferson.

“California is essentially ungovernable in its present size,� says Mark Baird of the Jefferson Declaration Committee. Baird hopes to attract a dozen counties to join together before petitioning the state to secede.

Like the western Maryland and northern Colorado counties, the northern California counties are conservative, rural and have little in common with San Francisco or Los Angeles or Sacramento, where Republicans hold not one statewide office and are outnumbered better than 2-1 in both houses of the state legislature.

While the folks in western Maryland, northern Colorado and northern California might be described as Red State secessionists, in Vermont the secessionists seem to be of the populist left. The Montpelier Manifesto of the Second Vermont Republic concludes:

“Citizens, lend your names to this manifesto and join in the honorable task of rejecting the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire and seeking its rapid and peaceful dissolution before it takes us all down with it.�

This sort of intemperate language may be found in Thomas Jefferson’s indictment of George III. If America does not get its fiscal house in order, and another Great Recession hits or our elites dragoon us into another imperial war, we will likely hear more of such talk.

Pat Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?�