and could not have essayed the project had Khrushchev not tilled the ground a generation earlier. That the Sovs of the day regarded Brezhnevism as "stagnation" was not entirely a function of reformist propaganda. True, had they known what the Nineties were to bring, when power passed from Gorbachev to his irresponsible sot of a successor, they'd likely have stuck with stagnation.

I fault Clinton for ignoring Russia during his eight years. Relations were notionally friendly, but the implied condescension (to say nothing of the depredations of western financiers) was obviously galling, and laid the ground for Cold War III. We and the Russians would all be a lot better off today had the USSR held together.

cordially,