Carnegie Moscow Center
Moscow needs to drop the notion of creating an exclusive power center in the post-Soviet space. Like other former European empires, Russia has no choice but to reinvent itself as a global player and as part of a wider community.
Enormous societal and political shifts 20 years ago opened prospects for a new, united Europe. Despite Russia’s role in this peaceful departure from totalitarianism, the country’s course in the subsequent two decades was not so straightforward. While the demolition of the Berlin Wall is no guarantee of success, democratic transformations are a necessary precondition.
Although a number of secret Soviet archives have been opened to researchers and the media, the revelation of their content has had a limited impact on popular understandings of Russian history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a time of momentous social and political change, including in Russia, but Russia’s development followed a different path than that of many Eastern European countries.
Mikhail Gorbachev is a rare leader who changed not just the history of a single nation, but the history of the world by dismantling the Soviet Communist system and ending the Cold War.
Elements of the Soviet political order remain deeply embedded in modern Russian politics, regardless of whether Lenin’s body remains in its mausoleum in Red Square.
Yeltsin was a revolutionary who destroyed the old order rather than building a new system. As a result, his years in power were often turbulent, but ultimately he managed to help Russia avoid collapse and civil war.
As a revolutionary, Boris Yeltsin was ready to go much further than his predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev. In the end, however, he returned Russia to a system that put power in the hands of a single person and discredited democratic freedoms.
While Boris Yeltsin did a lot to build a state under difficult circumstances, he built it to suit his own interests and ultimately squandered his nation’s trust by not delivering on the hopes he represented.
Russia’s economic fortunes often determine the popularity of its leaders, and the personality of those leaders, in turn, influences the country’s socio-political development.