Special Section on Putin and Russian History

What are the lessons that one can learn from the history of Russia and Ukraine? In our Spring 2022 issue, we published a special section bringing together expert opinions on the question.

As a new presidential administration pushes to end the war between the two countries, many of these essays are worth revisiting.

In “We Must Never Surrender,” Garry Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion who fled Russia after running for President against Putin in 2006, notes that he has warned that the Russian leader would become a global problem if we ignored his ambitions. “Hopefully, with the brutal new invasion of Ukraine, the democracies of the twenty-first century will realize they need to be ready for this fight,” he writes.

In “Can Russian Democracy Rise Again?”, Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin from 1991 to 1996, reflects upon his years working to bring about a more democratic Russia and whether that cause still has a future. “The Russian quest for a better world is real,” he writes. “Sooner or later the Russian people will rise up again and reclaim the Russia they deserve.”

And in “Putin and the Oligarchs,” investigative journalist Catherine Belton chronicles how the hurried transfer of power from Yeltsin to Putin ushered in a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who enriched themselves on Russia’s economy – and used their billions to undermine Western institutions and democracies.

Read these and other perspectives on Russia and Ukraine here.