It's an awfully Western-centric perspective, though.

The truth is actually a lot simpler, at least as far as I've been able to surmise. I've done more than my fair share of reading and studying on the Cold War and its aftermath and a few assertions are often repeated:

- Gorbachev was a true believer in Communism. He didn't actually mean to bring about an end to the Soviet Union; he recognized that the inefficiencies of Soviet kleptocracy were keeping the system from running efficiently and predicted that removing the barriers to reform would result in a more efficient, less oppressive Communism. Instead, he removed the only props holding together a dysfunctional system that never really worked in the first place.

- Yeltsin was a true believer in free markets. He was practically Texan in his politics. It didn't help that his economic advisors from the West were the guys who brought us NAFTA. He primarily saw the free market as a means to reward merit and advance economically through capitalism. He was attempting to do so in a country with no history of non-authoritarian rule, with a 70-year history under a command economy, and with the advice of people who had no problem with Walmart being China's 7th largest trading partner.

- Putin is an autocrat. Here's the sum total lineage of command in Russia for the past 120 years: Nicholas II, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin. Andropov and Chernenko share barely 28 months of that 120 years and were picked because they were basically the last of the Khruschev-era guys with a pulse. Soon as the new generation hit, it all collapsed around Gorbachev's ankles. Putin was a colonel in the secret police. From his perspective, the less things change, the better it is for the people. Czarist Russia and Soviet Russia were basically run the same way, other than the lack of church or royal interference under the Soviets. The oligarchy of Yeltsin was no different than the Nomenclatura of the Soviets is no different than oligarchy under Putin.

Russia is the Soviet Union. The Near Abroad no longer gets drawn on the maps the same way and there have been several break-away states, but a Ukranian rejection of Russia isn't too far gone from a Canadian rejection of the United States (imagining that Canada was the 51st state from 1914 to 1991). There's a pompous perspective in the West that goes something like "The USSR lost - you don't get to bitch about your sphere of influence anymore!" that fails to recognize that Russia is still standing, is still a world power and still has a keen territorial interest in its borders. And yeah - those people are likely to miss Yeltsin because he was a capitalist pushover that did damn near anything the World Bank told him to... while dropping the average life expectancy in Russia by 30 years.

Statements of “remember when we didn’t have to deal with this” are probably ringing through every Western capitol at the moment.

Yeltsin lasted eight years. He was Russia's George W Bush. Over the grand arc, Russia has been the land of Putins for far, far longer.

As an American that is well left of center on most issues, I have a question. Why do I find that so much of what Mr. Putin has to say seems to make such good sense -- at least where his views on Western geopolitics is concerned? His New York Times op-ed, for example, struck me as astute.

If we are at the opening of a new Cold War, it seems to me it owes as much to U.S. bad behavior during the last twenty years as it does to any Russian intransigence or longing for a restoration of Soviet prestige.

Appreciate your insights.

I knew things were bad under Yeltsin for the ordinary Russian, but I didn't know they were that bad. Nor did I understand the extent to which he cooperated with the United States and Russian Oligarchs.

I took a few Russian language courses a couple years ago and that helps to explain my two professors sentiments of missing the time when Russia was a communist state. They said they never liked anything about Yeltsin and that Putin is just as bad but at least people have some money now. One of their other reasons was the illusion of democracy portrayed by these leaders.