On 'Nother Russia

This editorial is quite consistent with the views that I have been
presenting about what has happened in Russia since 1991.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/27/opinion/edallison.php# ;

<quote>
Remember Russia's evil empire?
Graham Allison The Boston Globe
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts Fourteen years ago, the Soviet Union disappeared.
Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president on Christmas Day 1991. Boris
Yeltsin became independent Russia's first president. The Supreme Soviet,
the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. The
hammer- and-sickle flag that had flown over the Kremlin for seven decades
came down.
 
What President Ronald Reagan rightly called the "evil empire" was erased
from the world map. In its place emerged Russia and 14 other newly
independent states.
 
As the former Czech president Vaclav Havel observed, "Things have changed
so fast we have not yet taken time to be astonished." Nowhere is this
truer than on the territory of the former Soviet Union.
 
Who could have imagined the evil empire disappearing - without war? Who
could have imagined a revolution that buried Communism - without blood?
Who could have imagined U.S. victory over its Cold War rival - with a
whimper rather than a bang? The tectonic collapse of one pole of a bipolar
international system with so few aftershocks?
 
Who could have imagined that a Communist, totalitarian dictatorship would
be becoming a "normal" middle-income transitional society analogous to
Brazil, Venezuela, Indonesia or Nigeria?
 
Who could have imagined that 14 years on, not one single nuclear bomb from
the entire Soviet arsenal would have been found outside Russia? In
December 1991, *** Cheney, then secretary of defense, told an
interviewer: "If the Soviets do an excellent job at retaining control over
their stockpile of nuclear weapons - let's assume they've got 25,000 to
30,000; that's a ballpark figure - and they are 99 percent successful,
that would mean you could still have as many as 250 that they were not
able to control."
 
Who could have imagined a Russian government that is wealthy? A government
that worries today that it has too much money, rather than too little? A
Russian economy growing at more than 7 percent annually since President
Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000? International lenders stampeding to
put money into Russia rather than take it out, just seven years after the
August 1998 financial crash?
 
Who could have imagined a stable Russia - after years in which further
disintegration of the former Soviet Union seemed as likely as stability?
 
Who could have imagined that one week hence, on Jan. 1, 2006, the
president of Russia would become chairman of the Group of Seven leading
industrial democracies - soon to become the G-8?
 
Russia remains a kaleidoscope of contradiction. It is still, in Winston
Churchill's oft-quoted line, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an
enigma." But who could have imagined that 14 years on, Russia would be
where it is today?
 
Most Americans see Russia's glass as half empty rather than half full. In
light of the Putin government's backsliding on democracy, including the
impending adoption of a law that would severely limit the activities of
foreign nongovernmental organizations, there are always enough negatives
to support the pessimists.
 
In my view, Russia is still the land of the Matrushkas and Potemkin's
village - much more subtle and complex than we realize. One peels off one
shell only to find another - each layer embodying elements of truth,
competing with contradictory realities both within and beyond.
 
Relative to our grandest hopes, Russia disappoints. Compared with our
darkest fears, who could have imagined Russia today?
</quote>
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