A Cold War endgame or an opportunity missed? Analysing the Soviet collapse Thirty years later.

If we allow such a connection (i.e. as we do when we argue that the Soviet collapse was a "good thing" since the USSR was a monstrosity), then we may be called upon to follow this logic to the end and welcome the break-up of Putin's Russia, since it has embraced the same mechanisms of oppression once held dear by the Soviet authorities, and in this regard is a successor to the USSR and ruled by a repressive regime. A first hint at the danger Yeltsin and the Russian government might pose to the Soviet state came with Russia's declaration of sovereignty from the USSR on 12 June 1990. And, certainly under Putin, Russia has sought to gradually re-extend its control over key parts of the former USSR (most coercively in Ukraine/Crimea, Transnistria and South Ossetia).[56] Given this dichotomy, between how the Soviet Union's disappearance was perceived in 1991-2 and how it is presented officially in Russia today, we must ask: is Putin's apocalyptic interpretation historically merited? For example, between 1990-1, the government of the RSFSR, a key republic in the Soviet Union, was encouraging Union-owned enterprises and institutions located in Russia to change their jurisdiction to Russia. Aven's fellow reformer Anatolii Chubais echoed his former colleague's thoughts in a parallel interview: 'From that moment it was necessary to work on reforming Russia, not the USSR'.[80] From the perspective of Chubais, Aven and other former reformers of the late Soviet economy, by the final years of the USSR there was no doubt about the bankruptcy of the Soviet system: "disgusting lies from the first to the last word", as Chubais put it.[81] Hollowed out and unable to fulfil its promises of achieving, the USSR's socialist economy was sooner or later doomed; the question was how and in what circumstances this collapse might occur. [Extracted from the article]