... active antipathy from China. China too would make this mistake later, in relation to the USSR. By “go it alone” or go it with one’s allies but without each other, not... ... affairs in general but more specifically and much worse, in relations with the US and the West.
Within this matryoshka doll was another: the notion that the search for negotiations... ... the relationship with China. China would make the same mistake with regard to Soviet Russia a decade or so later. While there were partial course corrections along the way...
... military and economic—when taken together, seem to suggest that the goal and objective of the West is to initiate the endgame of the Long Cold War and to win it, imposing a zero-sum outcome. What was thought to be its end with the collapse of the USSR and unilateral retrenchment of Russia, did not amount to the sustainable victory that the West thought it would be. It now appears that a final gamble on the military advantage of the West has inspired a drive that goes beyond ‘containment’ to one of active encirclement and ‘roll back’ (to use a hawkish concept which had a short shelf-life ...
... modernization of the socialist system and gaining immense moral authority. However, already in 1989 all these necessary but belated measures let off a cumulative mass of contradictions that had built up over years. The collapse of the socialist bloc and the USSR itself was a totally unexpected disaster, which was swift and irreversible. It is not surprising that the West won a convincing victory. But the victory was over the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc, not the socialist project or the left idea as such.
Following the Cold War, Russia spent a long time flailing in search of a new identity and ideology. Interestingly, the positions of the liberals were fairly weak both in Russia and all the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Nationalism was consistently gaining ground across ...
Should the West be concerned about the Eurasian Economic Union? Is it a disguised attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union?
Does Vladimir ... ... aside, can Putin realistically plan to restore the Soviet Union? The answer is a definite “no” assuming that the Russian leader is a rational politician capable of a realistic assessment of Russia’s current capabilities as well as of ...
This year will see the 25th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s breakup and the emergence of new Russia on its ruins. Time is ripe for taking stocks and mapping a road into the future.
A group of members of Russia’s Council ... ... The country has regained its military potential at a qualitatively new level and at still tolerable costs. The expansion of Western alliances to the territories Russia considers vital to its security has been stemmed, although it had to pay a dear price ...
... outside the control of the United States and its allies.
AP /EPA / Maxim Shipenkov
Ivan Timofeev, Elena Alekseenkova
:
Eurasia in Russian Foreign Policy:
Interests, Opportunities and Constraints
These different readings of the situation add an extra element ... ... conflict to the division of the Soviet legacy and thus impede the completion of the historical process of the disintegration of the USSR. On the face of it, the West should be very interested in seeing the end of that process, but by its interference it makes that prospect more remote. ...
... of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe passed almost unnoticed in Russia. Probably because the date falls during the most systemically unstable period in Europe since the declaration was signed.... ... sensed (probably instinctively rather than rationally) the moment when they needed to "hold onto their winnings."
The West at that moment had just lived through an internal crisis, caused in part by foreign policy failures. Europe and the U.S. ...
