Editor's Note | Fall 2017

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it took a while for Russia to recover from an existential crisis. As one of the poles of the global system during the Cold War, the Soviet regime lost its raison d’etre after the collapse of the USSR, while the other pole, the U.S., declared its victory or as is considered by some scholars ‘the end of history.’ At the end of the 1990s, the Russian Federation, the main inheritor of the Soviets, recovered from the confusion, the identity crisis and the political instability. Under the strong leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has become an increasingly significant actor in the global politics; it returned to its traditional great power politics and began to follow a more assertive foreign policy. It is commonly accepted now that the Russian leaders are determined to restore Russian global position and to consolidate its role as one of the main power-centers of the emerging multi-power system.