Both the Russian leadership and society must learn the lessons of the collapse. The leadership must understand the danger of taking ill‑considered action and ignoring challenges, and Russia’s society must understand that internal conflict never leads to common success. Then Russia’s foes will have to admit that 1991 was an exception, not the rule—and that Russia is not going anywhere.
Thirty-five years ago, in autumn 1991, the Soviet Union was living out its final months. Its all-consuming crisis was obvious. An attempted coup in Auguast had accelerated its downward spiral. Yet its disappearance from the map, at the end of the year, was still unimaginable.
The Soviet Union was one of the two pillars of the post-1945 world order; its dissolution triggered a global restructuring that is still underway. The United States’ attempt to govern the world through de facto hegemony has failed. The transformation of the world order continues, and nobody can say what model will emerge or whether a stable balance will ever be established.
For the Russian Federation, as for all former Soviet republics, the USSR’s collapse called for forming a new political consciousness. This process turned out to be much more complex and painful than it seemed at the outset, when people thought that everything would sort itself out anew, once statehood was declared. The situation in Ukraine is another manifestation of self‑determination, including for Russia, which is using the Special Military Operation to determine its borders beyond the (very specific) logic of Soviet territorial divisions, and to take a place on the regional and global stage that is different from that of the ideological, authoritarian Soviet superpower.
Russia rightfully takes pride in its centuries-old unbroken statehood, which has taken various forms (including the unusual Soviet one) and overcome all sorts of hardships. Each stage was not an automatic continuation of the previous one, but an adaptation to domestic and international changes. All countries combine continuity and innovation in different ratios over time, but this is especially sensitive and complex in a country as large and heterogeneous as Russia.
The historical journey of Russia’s ever-changing statehood continues, with the next destination not yet in sight.
One enduring consequence of the USSR’s disintegration is the unwillingness of Western (primarily European) states to seriously discuss issues of mutual interest (above all, security) with Russia. This attitude grows out of the precedent from 35 years ago, when it turned out that a dangerous and powerful adversary can simply give up and dissolve.
Nowadays, the West claims that the Cold War could not have ended any other way. The Soviets had lost the strategic competition to the “free world” and were doomed to leave the historical stage. However, at the time, until almost the very last moment, no one expected the end to be so swift and radical. Naturally, the Western community, which had been opposing the Kremlin for decades and saw it as an existential threat, did not object. Even the most ardent anti‑Soviet activists could hardly believe in such a happy ending.
The crisis of the Soviet system had begun a couple of decades before its collapse, and it increasingly fell behind as the Soviet leadership failed to grasp the changes in global trends. But the USSR’s death was probably not inevitable, and it certainly could at least have been delayed. It is impossible to say for sure that the Soviet Union would have survived under a different policy, but, in hindsight, it is clear that the late Soviet leadership’s efforts to stop the decline only accelerated it as their impulsive reforms deepened internal contradictions and triggered a historical rupture that even their opponents had never dreamed of.
Was this malice or error? The anniversary will prompt a new round of disputes. I share the view that the tragedy was caused by the Soviet leadership’s unfounded idealism, incompetence, and ignorance—not by its enemies’ guile. But those enemies eagerly claimed credit, and became full of themselves.
Today, when Western capitals reject compromise with Moscow and call for inflicting a strategic defeat upon it, they clearly expect history to repeat. Believing that Reagan’s early-1980s escalation of the Cold War set in motion the USSR’s eventual collapse, they now hold that further escalation will overstrain Russia, aggravate its internal situation, and initiate its collapse like forty years ago. The main thing is to drive hard and force Russia to accept Western terms. And that is exactly what they are trying to do.
One could explain at length how things are different: in Russia, in the economic system, and around the world. But all of this is secondary.
Above all else, the West must be made to understand that the Soviet collapse was a tragic but isolated and unique episode. Russia’s adversaries will not receive any gifts like they did in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Both the Russian leadership and society must learn the lessons of the collapse. The leadership must understand the danger of taking ill‑considered action and ignoring challenges, and Russia’s society must understand that internal conflict never leads to common success. Then Russia’s foes will have to admit that 1991 was an exception, not the rule—and that Russia is not going anywhere.
For citation:
Lukyanov, F.A., 2026. An Exception, Not the Rule. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 5–8. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-5-8
Source: Russia in Global Affairs
