In Marin County in northern California lies an estate that epitomises the opulence of the world's richest region. In the centre of 18 manicured acres stands a 41-room mansion whose very door-knobs are made of gold. There are swimming pools galore, two helicopter pads and a vast ballroom in which hundreds of guests can be entertained.

Not long ago the rancho was rented by film star Eddie Murphy, but in September 1998 it was bought outright for $6.75 million by a customer who paid in suitcases crammed with cash. The new owner has ensconced his family in the luxurious surroundings but up to now has been unable personally to enjoy the facilities of his new home.

Pavlo Lazarenko, the new Lord of the Marin County manor, is the subject of extradition proceedings in Switzerland and elsewhere on charges of embezzlement and money-laundering. Before he moved to the US, Lazarenko enjoyed notoriety as prime minister of Ukraine, the second-largest of the former republics of the USSR.

Thousands of miles away in the bleak precincts of Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has turned his country into a Soviet theme-park. Hardly a street-name has been changed since the fall of communism.

Ukraine and Belarus played their roles in momentous events which followed but did not stem from the collapse of the Berlin Wall. As 1991 drew to a close, a meeting was held at a hunting lodge close to the Polish border in what was then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia.

Its political leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, was present; so, too, were the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Boris Yeltsin, and the president of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Leonid Kravchuk.

The main item on the agenda was the relationship between the three republics and the Soviet Union, of which they were constituent and subordinate units. When the meeting ended a dramatic announcement was made. A communique signed by the three leaders informed the world that the USSR had ceased to exist as a geo-political entity.

Years later Mr Shushkevich explained to the BBC that the main motive behind the decision was the need to oust Mikhail Gorbachev from power. Mr Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union: without the USSR, Mr Gorbachev would be powerless.

Muddled minds now occasionally refer to the collapse of the Soviet Union when what really collapsed was the communist system by which the Soviet Union was governed. The territory of the Soviet Union, an inheritance from the old Tsarist Russian Empire, did not collapse. It was dismantled for short-term political reasons, and Ukraine and Belarus are two of the independent nation-states to emerge from the dissolution.

Of the two, Ukraine cherishes its independence more strongly. It is a big country by any standards. Covering almost 250,000 square miles it is much larger than any country in Western Europe, and its population is comparable in size to that of the United Kingdom, France or Italy. Belarus is much smaller, with a population roughly twice that of the island of Ireland.

Economically both states have been plundered by politicians, and the Californian ranchero Lazarenko is far from being the sole suspect.

But geopolitical outlooks differ drastically. On arrival by train from Moscow at Minsk one is greeted by a large sign which reads: "Glory to the indivisible Union of the Hammer and Sickle". Similar slogans have been removed even in the most pro-communist regions of Russia. The eccentric President Lukashenko clamps down strongly on human rights and is moving his country towards reunion with Moscow.

Arriving at Kiev, Ukraine's large and handsome capital, an immense concrete arch catches the eye on the right bank of the mighty Dnepr. It was built in Soviet times as a monument to the Unity of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. The structure remains intact but now has no name. Ukraine makes no moves towards a return to Russian rule. The tensions between the nationalist west of the country and its large ethnic Russian areas such as Crimea and Odessa are too strong to be put to such a test.

Official government statistics show Belarus, to modify the Irish cliche, to be a Slavic Tiger. Mr Lukashenko issues figures which show impressive annual economic growth. Western economists look to other indicators of the state of the Belarus economy. Chief of these is a black-market exchange rate in which a single dollar can buy up to three-quarters of a million Belarusan roubles.

Things are brighter in Ukraine, though they were not always that way. Independence ushered in a period of intense nationalism which saw bizarre instances of chauvinistic excess. Even the former dwelling of the writer Mikhail Bulgakov in Kiev was constantly daubed with red paint simply because he was an ethnic Russian.

A series of religious schisms between Orthodox churches of divided loyalties led to violent incidents. The most bizarre of these was a series of riots in 1995 between believers who supported an independent Ukrainian church and those who remained loyal to the Patriarchate of Moscow.

Tens of thousands of younger people looking for something to believe in after the collapse of communism were lured into a millennial cult known as the White Brotherhood, run by Maria Tsvigun, a former official of the Young Communist League, and robbed of all their material possessions.

But things have calmed down somewhat. The currency, the hryvna, has stabilised. Some industries have begun to pick up and, most importantly, Ukraine, unlike Russia, is at peace. Its businessmen have plundered their country to a lesser degree than have their Russian counterparts. In a recent interview with the Economist magazine, the economic reformer Oleksandr Lavrinovich put it this way: "Ours are vegetarians. Theirs are carnivores."

Ukraine's politicians have provided the country, in Mr Lavrinovich's words, with an economic choice "between the death penalty and serious illness". Things could be worse. Only the death penalty is currently on offer in Belarus.

The Fall of the Wall series of articles is available on The Irish Times Website www.ireland.com

On Monday, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Seamus Martin and Denis Staunton, Berlin Correspondent, will be available online at www.ireland.com to answer questions arising out of the series.

Readers can e-mail questions in advance to smartin@irish-times.com