Interview - Andrei Tsygankov russiaherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from russiaherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In 1922, Russia was marking the fifth anniversary of the 1917 coup that brought the Bolsheviks to power, but the country's future seemed very much up in the air. It was the crucial events of that year that marked a tumultuous break with the past and set the mold for decades of dictatorship.
Running Russia as a near-absolute monarch was never enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The story of his 21-year rule is equally about trying to formulate Russia’s proposition to the rest of the world - a kind of national brand message, something that was lost when the Soviet Union ceased to be the global purveyor of the far-left ideal.