ABSTRACT
The fall of communism overshadowed perhaps an even more epoch-making event, the disintegration of a geopolitical unit that had lasted some five hundred years, in comparison with which the reign of communism had been a mere interregnum. The geopolitical and strategic balance not only of the post-Second World War era but of the whole epoch since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 came to an end. Russia’s long climb from local, regional, continental and then to global power was suddenly dramatically reversed. The dissolution of communism ended one set of problems associated with global confrontation in the Cold War, but the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised no less epochal issues. Would the inherent instability of Russo-European relations for the last four hundred years give way to a new partnership?2 Would the new Russia be able to define a post-imperial and post-communist national identity and integrate into global economic and political processes? What sort of ‘normality’ in international and regional affairs was normal for Russia? These questions were hard enough for the weak Russia of the 1990s, but were no less complex for the revived power of the 2000s.
