An original history of Russia's thousand-year past tracing the forces and the myths that have
shaped Putin's politics and rekindled the Cold War. Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has
reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of Soviet communism the West convinced
itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the dominant ultimately unique system of
governance - a hubris that shaped how the West would treat Russia for the next two decades. But
history wasn't over. Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency he appeared to
commit himself to friendship with the West suggesting that Russia could join the European
Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin
of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist
dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad. So what happened? Was he
lying when he proclaimed his support for freedom democracy and friendship with the West? Or
was he sincere? Did he change his views at some stage between then and now? And if that is the
case what happened to change him? Putin and the Return of History examines these questions
in the context of Russia's thousand-year past tracing the forces and the myths that have
shaped Putin's politics of aggression: the enduring terror of encirclement by outsiders the
subjugation of the individual to the cause of the state the collectivist values that allow the
sacrifice of human lives in battle the willingness to lie and deceive the co-opting of
religion and the belief in Great Russia's mission to change the world.
