ABSTRACT
The Russian political system lacks legitimacy; it can't deliver bread, only imperial circuses; expansionism, and expansionism alone, diverts the popular mind from its misery. For symptoms of the problem, people can start with the presidential campaign—a political event that in many countries does bring neuroses to the surface. An exceptionally diverse group of analysts and political commentators subscribes to some version of the diagnosis just set forth. The Russian ruling class is far more diverse than ever before—politically, economically, regionally, generationally, ethnically, and in other ways as well. To be against a restored communist imperium and against bloodshed is not, of course, to be against re-building Russian power. In ordinary Russian discourse on foreign policy, the question of prestige does come up in a way that is, at first sight, quite different from what one encounters in an American context.
