The following article appears in the 25th anniversary issue of World Policy Journal. For the month of November, read the entire 25th anniversary issue, fall 2008, for free!
By Nina L. Khrushcheva
There is one thing important to keep in mind when talking about Russia—it doesn’t change. Not that it doesn’t change at all, of course. Buildings, fashions, leaders, regimes, or at least regimes’ names, all these change. And over the next quarter century, inevitably, revolutions will roar, the ruble will collapse or soar, just as over the past quarter century Soviet dissidents or Russian oligarch, have been imprisoned or exiled. This all happens. But neither the late czarist system, nor late-communism, nor post-communism was able to generate a viable alternative to a society where changes, when they do happen, result in a destructive and malfunctioning social order. This, I fear, is what Russia has in store for itself—and for the world—over the next quarter century. Continue reading…