1,043 people were detained at the 26 March 2017 anti-corruption rally in Moscow. (c) Xinhua/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Western comments on Russian domestic and foreign affairs have, during the last years, become more and more gloomy. Among other topics, this pessimistic discourse (to which I too have contributed) features Putin’s neo-imperial plans for the post-Soviet area, the many varieties of post-Soviet Russian ultra-nationalism, the fragility of the geopolitical grey zone between the Kremlin-dominated sphere on the one side and NATO in the other, Moscow’s subversion of the foundations of the world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime (via Russian attacks on the nuclear-weapons-free state Ukraine), the catastrophic scenario of a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, the grave repercussions of such a new escalation for the whole of East-Central Europe, and the continuing western naivety with regard to the origins, nature, functioning and aims of the current regime in Moscow.
To be sure, arguments like these have been and are still necessary to be made as they are so far insufficiently salient in western mass media. Yet, it may be time for developing in parallel a different approach to Russia’s future. At least that is what recent history and the aftermath of the Cold War’s end suggests.
How we lost Russia
In 1991, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union opened an unexpected window of opportunity for the creation of a comprehensive, cooperative and stable European security and economic order. One of the reason that this fortunate chance has been missed was that the western community of experts on eastern Europe had, even as Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika was slowly turning into a full-scale revolution, not foreseen such an outcome.
