title: Introduction
abstract: This chapter focuses on some of the problems that are set in the foundations of Russia's post-Cold War relationship with the West. It then points to problems that emerge from linguistic and historical 'interpretation'. In the West, the Russian middle class is understood to be a driver of political change, part of an evolving entrepreneurial private sector and civil society increasingly free and independent from the state. Swedish analysts have suggested that the Ukraine crisis has revealed that 
journal: Manchester University Press eBooks