world should be? And did that really begin to solidify after Putin came into power? Yes, it did. It started to solidify. But the basic ideas were already there back in 1991 at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. People around Boris Yeltsin, in particular his economic advisor and prime minister for some period of time, Yegor Gahidar, were saying that in the conditions of the disintegration of the USSR and economic collapse, Russia really didn't have resources to maintain its control over the post-Soviet space in the way how it was doing that during the Soviet times, which meant a lot of expenses, also subsidies, coming from the process that Russia was getting from selling oil and gas. And the argument was, okay, we need this money for ourselves. We need this money to rebuild Russia. And 20 years from now, the Republics would come back one way or another, not in the form of the former Soviet arrangement, where it would be a burden, continuing burden on the economic loan (29/40)
You are viewing a single comment's thread from: