Mikhail Gorbachev at his news conference following a summit with US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.
Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images
Mikhail Gorbachev died at 91 on Aug. 30, 2022. A historian of the Soviet era assesses his impact and the consequences of his failed attempts to reform state socialism.
Mikhail Gorbachev addresses American business executives in 1990.
David Longstreath/AP
Monica Attard witnessed the death throes of the USSR – and the birth of a brave new world – as the ABC’s Russia foreign correspondent. In 2022, a return to an Orwellian regime looms.
Russian artists are finding an artistic home in Kirkenes, a small Norwegian town 15 kilometres from the Russian border.
A view of destroyed Russian military vehicles installed in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 24, 2022. Kyiv authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital for fear of Russian missile attacks. Independence Day fell on the same day as the six-month mark in the war.
(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Aug. 24, 2022 marked both the 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union and the six-month mark of war. As they have for more than three decades, Ukrainians showed resilience.
US president Joe Biden speaks with his ‘old friend’, CIA director William J Burns (left), during a national security team meeting in the White House.
Adam Schultz/White House Photo/Alamy
With a formidable Kremlinologist in charge and Donald Trump out of the presidential picture, has the CIA regained its influence amid the ‘new cold war’?
Soviet-era monument in Riga, Latvia, which was splashed with the colours of the Ukraine flag the day after Russia invaded in February 2022.
Kārlis Dambrāns/ Flickr.
The Soviet Union was a latecomer to industrial whaling, but it slaughtered whales by the thousands once it started and radically under-reported its take to international monitors.
During the Cold War, Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union was tightly restricted.
Dzurag/iStock via Getty Images Plus
During the Cold War, Russia’s refusal to allow Jews to leave the country reflected its political aims. The same is likely true today, a Jewish studies scholar explains.
Youthful patriotism: Russia’s sense of its own history remains unclear.
REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina
The United States still sees itself as the world’s one and only superpower… The reality is now quite different: for several years, the country has been undergoing a slow but inevitable decline.
While there are good reasons not to exaggerate these events, the bad news is these incidents are almost certain to continue. But we shouldn’t frame them as if we’re in the brink of war.
The US is deploying more troops closer to European allies’ borders with Russia.
Reuters/Alamy
US plans to add more combat-ready forces in eastern Europe to send a strong message to Russia.
Vladimir Putin speaks at a rally in Moscow in March 2022, according to this Kremlin image, with a banner that says “For the world without Nazism! For Russia!”
Kremlin Press Office/Handout/Andalou Agency via Getty Images
For hundreds of years, Russia has elevated its political leaders as figureheads. That’s part of what makes its propaganda so convincing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to Russia’s commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights during a meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow on May 26, 2022.
(Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russia’s war in Ukraine calls for drawing a line between power and luck. Putin, who was widely considered among the most powerful people in the world, may have been simply lucky.
Yuri Shevchuk of the band DDT performs in 1987. In May 2022 Shevchuk was charged with a misdemeanor for insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin during a concert.
Joanna Stingray/Getty Images
The West’s new approach to Russia – bar it from international organizations, restrict international trade, prevent further military moves – looks just like how it treated Russia in the 20th century.
Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies, University of South Florida