title: The collapse of Communism, the Russian Federation and countries of the Former Soviet Union
abstract: This chapter charts the collapse of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Russia’s resurgence in the past two decades. It reflects on the return of old thinking and autocratic government after short-lived periods of hope for economic and political reforms, initially perestroika and glasnost in the late 1980s. Wilton Park benefited from some memorable interventions by Soviet and Central European participants, including some prescient predictions of Communism’s collapse. Glasnost had the unintended si