RUSSIA'S REVENGE.

The article focuses on how the optimism for cooperation between Russia and West at the end of the Cold War gave way to renewed tension, shaped by political rise of Boris Yeltsin and the violent consolidation of presidential power in the early 1990s. Topics include the failed August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, the 1993 constitutional crisis and shelling of the Russian parliament, and the long-term consequences of centralized authority for Russia's domestic politics and relations with the West.