Perfect Storm

Abstract

This book attempts to retell and reinterpret the story of Russia’s failed opening to the West. Rather than geopolitics, it considers the underlying economic, technological, and social aspects of this opening and the role these played in its ultimate failure. Although essential to an understanding of what happened, and what went wrong, they have received less attention. As the book shows, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to a tragic close a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening, which lasted for three tumultuous decades, has now been followed by a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them. Russian–Western relations today are as hostile as they have ever been. Who or what is to blame? There is already an abundance of analysis and reflection on the origins and causes of the Ukrainian War and the Kremlin’s role in it. Perfect Storm: Russia’s Failed Opening, War, Sanctions, and the Future reviews the mixture of motives, illusions, and hopes, that accompanied Russia’s opening to the West; its achievements and disappointments; the complexity of the post-invasion sanctions regime and the Russians’ responses to them; the quasi-exodus of Westerners from Russia and its impact on the Russian economy and society; and finally Russia’s possible futures under a new generation of leaders.