But the euphoria which greeted the new post-socialist Russia in the early
1990s was not to last. The freezes and thaws which had so characterized eastwest relations in the past have found their echo, once again, long after the
spectre of communism has been consigned to history. As Russia has faced up
to the very substantial problems left in the wake of a struggling planned
economy, the western media have consistently focused on the wretched and
the squalid, the hopeless and the incompetent. In popular discourse there is a
prevailing sense that Russia is a disturbing, if not frightening, place to be, a
country which is somehow incapable of pulling itself out of the hole it is in.
At times, indeed, this extends almost to an element of schadenfreude at the sight
of a formerly all-powerful enemy brought low.
