... attempts to remedy the fundamental problems underlying Soviet-type regimes.
It was a typical tragic situation. What Stalin had done to the Soviet Union and its allied states could not be repaired without the kinds of severe bumps and crises that Russia and the other former Soviet republics have been experiencing since the Soviet collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes resulted in severe problems, some of which might well be called disastrous. Nevertheless, the fall ...
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/d%C3%A9tente-plus-how-should-west-deal-russia
“Leslie Gelb speaks for much of the US foreign policy establishment, writes Walter Laquer, “when he says that ... ‘It is totally unrealistic . . . to think that the West can gain desired Russian restraint and cooperation without dealing with Moscow as a great power that possesses ...
... in a 1993 article in NATO Review Andrei Kozyrev, the first and most pro-Western Russian Foreign Minister to date, wrote: The situation of the Russian-speaking population in states of the former USSR presents a considerable and complex problem for the Russian Federation's foreign policy and diplomacy. We are counting on support from the NATO member nations to help ensure protection for the rights, life and dignity of the Russian minorities. It is now more widely understood that this is not only a major humanitarian problem ...