http://www.rferl.org/content/brezhnevs-children/24765431.html
Russia is not the Soviet union. The regime in Russia has little in common with the Soviet regime. To imply that the process of reforming Russia represents a continuation of attempts to reform the Soviet regime, as Whitmore does, distorts reality beyond recognition.
Failures of reform under the Soviet regime were mostly due to features of that regime which have disappeared: (1) the commando-administrative economic system, (2) the ideological...
... sovereign republics in which the rights and freedoms of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed.” This was Mikhail Gorbachev’s final attempt to stop the disintegration of a major country. Nine months later, following a referendum ... ... – eroded. Attempts to create a ‘centralized’ or unipolar global system of governance simply failed.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin described the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a major geopolitical catastrophe. The West viewed this statement ...
... But I wonder how seriously they have thought about this assumption. When I ask Russians if they see an alternative, they usually can say what they don't like about Putin. But I have I have yet to hear anyone present a credible alternative.
Mikhail Gorbachev, reflecting the view of a large part of the Russian public, once said that Putin literally saved Russia. Yet the difficulty of imaging a country after the departure of an extraordinary leader is not unique to Russia under Putin. Think ...