Russia

The End of the End of History

On December 25 of this year we will mark 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many in Russia and the West were optimistic about the seeming imminent integration of Russia into a Western-led liberal democratic global order. The United States, in particular, fresh off its ‘victory’ in the Cold War, could hardly restrain its triumphalism as it stood astride the world as the sole superpower.

The Evolution of National Security Thinking in Post-Soviet Russia

This article contributes to the rich body of literature on Russian security perceptions and analyses how Russian security thinking evolved over the last 20 years. The focus of the article is on how Russian security perspective shifted from the goal of assuring Russian security by integration and cooperation with the West to the idea of Russia’s own separate geo-economic project and the goal of reducing the country’s dependencies on the West. Security in this article is understood both as a military-political and as an economic phenomenon.