The Resurrection Gate in Moscow at night; Okino/Wikicommons
Somehow the earth-shaking impact of the end of Communism in Russia in 1991 has still not been felt fully—at least in much of the west. Recall that at the time, even as the Berlin Wall fell in August 1989 as the USSR began to crumble, the reaction of the Bush administration (and many experts) was to try to preserve the status quo, with which we felt comfortable. So it was that a full two years after Berlin, in August 1991, only four months before the red flag came down over the Kremlin, U.S. President George H. W. Bush delivered his celebrated “Chicken Kiev” speech to the Ukrainian parliament, urging them to avoid “suicidal nationalism” and remain in the deliquescing Soviet Union.
As the breakup became undeniable, it was belittled or misinterpreted. Some Americans were triumphalist, announcing that “we” had won the Cold War, forgetting that the real victims of Communism had been those who lived under it. The left turned a bit grumpy and irritable at the loss. Defense and foreign policy thinkers were thrown into confusion by the unexpected change of landscape.
Several years of near chaos in Russia ensued, with conspicuous poverty, unemployment, and political confusion. Some latched onto these phenomena to argue that that the old USSR had really been better, and that both we and the Russians would be better off with it back.
Today the talk in the media is of
