The debate over Russia’s likely course of development under Putin has paid surprisingly little attention to his openly stated goal of reintegrating Russia with other former Soviet republics.
About the Author
John B. Dunlop, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (1998), The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (1993), and The New Russian Nationalism (1985).
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has used its two-thirds majority in parliament to change the constitution, erase checks and balances, and make the electoral system even more majoritarian.
Does the election of Vladimir Putin as Russia’s president represent a fundamental turn away from democracy or merely a temporary setback? Although Putin’s apparent indifference to democracy is worrisome, it…
