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Podcast: New Books in Politics and Polemics
Episode: Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Description: Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening lasted for three tumultuous decades and ended with a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them.
In Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future (Oxford University Press, 2025), Russia analyst Thane Gustafson reinterprets the story of Russia's failed ope...