Emmanuel Todd attracted attention in 1976 when he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates and foreign trade data in his work "La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique" (The Final Fall: an Essay on the Disintegration of the Soviet Sphere). Todd deduced that the Soviet Union had stagnated in the 1970s and was falling behind not only the West but its own Eastern European satellite states economically. In addition to this, low birth rates, a rising suicide rate, and worker discontent all were factors in an increasingly low level of productivity in the economy. Todd also predicted that poorly carried-out political and economic reforms would lead to a break-up of the Soviet Union with non-Russian republics seceding.