On 26 December 1991 the USSR cease to exist and enter the Russian Republic(?).
Russia was experimenting with democracy that brought Boris Yeltsin to power as head of the new Republic…….they had a few elections and tried to make democracy work…..but things did not go as planned……and out of the ashes of a budding democracy rose the specter that is Putin.
How Russia’s democratic hopes gave way to repressive nationalism.
In 1997, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the Clinton administration’s lead official on all matters Russia, gave a speech at Stanford University on American policy toward Moscow. He admitted, in not so many words, that persuading the erratic President Boris Yeltsin to keep on course with economic reform and progress toward democracy was a daunting task. But Talbott declared himself optimistic nonetheless. His main reason, he said, was “generational,”
or to be even more blunt, biological. The dynamic of what is happening in Russia today is not just Westernizers versus Slavophiles; it is also young versus old—and the young have a certain advantage in at least that dimension of the larger struggle.
Source: Why Democracy Didn’t Work in Russia | New Republic
How did Putin take control and just what is Putinism?
An excellent piece in the Journal Of Democracy….here on pdf…….
The collapse of the old Soviet Union was a disaster for most ordinary Russians, especially the poorer workers. Many see Putin as the man who restored their former national pride, and put Russia back where they think it belongs.
Best wishes, Pete.
Yeltsin was very much the Russian version of Trump, if you think about it…
Same type of buffoon. Good call. chuq
Nationalistic fervor. But areworkers better off. chuq
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