Does the west understand Russia? Perhaps the better question is: has it ever understood Russia? At the moment of the Soviet Union's collapse, the policy consensus was that the USSR was solid as a rock. Yet while the west was praising Russia's transition to democracy and the market, Boris Yeltsin was restoring personalised power and building institutions of oligarchic capitalism.
As Russia experts in the US searched for a “common strategic purpose” and European colleagues pursued a “partnership for modernisation” with Moscow, officials in the Kremlin were treating the west as an opponent and accusing it of humiliating Russia.
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