Carnegie Moscow Center
Two issues—military reform and interethnic relations in the Russian Federation—seem to have grabbed the most public attention since the Soviet collapse. They have had a big impact on Russia’s public and political life over the last twenty years, and affect the foundations for the country’s future development.
By its example, the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution encouraged the West to improve the labor conditions of their workers in the hopes of averting similar social unrest in their own countries.
Told in eight parts, Eight Pieces of Empire follows the USSR’s disintegration and its aftermath through two decades of the author’s own reporting from the region.
Vladimir Putin’s plans to create an economically integrated Eurasian Union could give Russia an opportunity to become a real regional leader, so long as Eurasian economic is voluntary and Moscow’s partners do not see the process as an attempt at political domination.
Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West has yet to adjust to the post-Soviet reality and Russia has not settled on its relationship with the rest of the world.
On October 31, 2011, the world population reached 7 billion. However, for most of the post-Soviet nations, population levels have been declining.
Twenty years after its independence from the Soviet Union, Belarus faces increasing isolation, possible economic collapse, and the brutal regime of Alexander Lukashenka.
Russia is no longer an empire, but it is not yet a nation-state either. To be seen as a great power in the twenty-first century, it has to reform its institutions and economy and become a great country.
While Russia is still an important global strategic player, thanks to its oil and gas reserves and nuclear arsenal, it lacks the will and the resources to enact a return to the Russian empire.
Mikhail Gorbachev reflects on the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S. actions in the last twenty years, and Putin and Medvedev’s roles in Russia today.