澳门六合彩

As Russia tightens its grip on the Crimean peninsula amid heightening East-West tensions, observers have drawn evocative parallels between the current crisis and the Cold War.

In some ways such comparisons are misplaced. Clearly, Putin鈥檚 Russia is not the Soviet behemoth. It is a regional, not a global player. Economically, culturally, and socially, it is too tightly integrated with the West for it to be easily shut off with another Iron Curtain. Moreover, unlike the Soviet Union, which represented an alternative vision of modernity鈥擟ommunism鈥擱ussia represents no such thing. Putin鈥檚 foreign policy is not underpinned by a coherent ideology.

Nevertheless, Soviet decision-making during the Cold War provides useful reference points for understanding Putin鈥檚 actions. For twenty-five years scholars have scrutinized declassified Soviet records, translated and published by the聽. They have unwrapped mysteries, deciphered enigmas and solved many of the riddles that had plagued Western perceptions of Soviet policies at the height of the Cold War. With hindsight, we can say see where the West got it wrong.