The debate over Russia’s likely course of development under Putin has paid surprisingly little attention to his openly stated goal of reintegrating Russia with other former Soviet republics.
About the Author
John B. Dunlop, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (1998), The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (1993), and The New Russian Nationalism (1985).
The first two months of the war alone turned the Russian clock back decades, undoing thirty years of post-Soviet economic gains and reducing the country to an international pariah state.
This region’s five republics have just lived through a remarkable first decade of independence that raises questions about “preconditions”-based theories of democratization.
