Putin’s Crimean History Lesson

President Vladimir Putin’s defiant speech in Moscow on Tuesday, which he followed up by signing a draft treaty to make the Crimea part of Russia, can be interpreted in two ways. The optimistic reading is that the Russian leader’s revanchism, and his railing against the West, is, essentially, an acknowledgement of his country’s weakness, and of the reduced circumstances in which it finds itself two decades after the collapse of Communism. The pessimistic view is that the effective annexation of Crimea marks the beginning of something new and ominous: not another Cold War but, rather, a revival of a chauvinistic and expansive Russian nationalism that goes back to the tsars.

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