James Sherr, the former head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, is a very distinguished analyst who understands the condition of Russia better than almost all the commentators on that subject. Over the years I have learned that his views of Russia ring more and more true. One idea that I find particularly compelling is the idea that Russia is in many ways an unreformed absolutist state, more similar to the time of the early Stuarts in Britain than to any modern political system. Furthermore, far from modernizing Russia, the Soviet period set back Russian political reform to an even more primitive political era. The impact of this insight is to change the way that we analyse decision taking in Moscow. Rational expectations must be put aside in favour of a psychological or even slightly mystical analysis. Thus we examine Russia's unfolding disaster in Ukraine. There have been several Western analysts who have argued that the attempted seizure of Ukraine is a...
Musings on World events from the perspective of a Social and an Economic Liberal.