Top Highlights

• These leaders used all available methods of power politics and diplomacy to promote Soviet state interests in a competitive world.
• The consensus in Washington was that the countries of Eastern Europe and Russia were making a “transition” under the guidance of American consultants toward a market economy and liberal democracy. This was also the expectation in Russia.
• Russia’s post-Communist state was extremely weak, and its leadership appeared to be eager to join the Western order under any conditions. Soon, however, Russia’s behavior began to disappoint the West.
• The economic reformers in the Kremlin, eager to liberate Russia from its bane of state centralism and prevent the Communist Party from returning to power, quickly privatized enormous state assets. Most of them ended up in the hands of criminal groups and a few big business oligarchs linked to the state bureaucracy.
• The state that emerged from the Communist collapse was very weak, could not collect taxes, and could not implement necessary market reforms effectively.