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by vanusa 1628 days ago
If a major superpower falls ...

I don't think you can say there's a general "rule" like this, throughout history. If anything the cases where these powers become straight-up subjugated from the outside (absent outright military invasion) are in the minority. Counter-examples abound, e.g. the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, or Spain after the disaster of 1898.

See Russia after the fall of the USSR, but before Putin.

Post-Soviet Russia was weak for sure, but not a vassal state by any interpretation.