Soviet Union and Putin's Russia: Can the past be revived?

On a deeper level, Putin’s Ukraine move is part of a bigger and desperate design to somehow attempt a reversal of the ‘humiliation’ felt at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deployment of troops in two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine after recognising them independent has triggered sanctions from the US and its European allies and fears of war. Russia’s official position is that it is responding to threats to its own security from Ukraine's increasingly close relations with the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

But, on a deeper level, Putin’s Ukraine move is part of a bigger and desperate design to somehow attempt a reversal of the ‘humiliation’ that he felt at the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991.

In 2008, Putin publicly said he would reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union if he had a chance to alter modern Russian history. This was three years after he called the Soviet fall the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

Putin, who served in the Soviet-era spy agency KGB and has been in power in Russia for more than two decades, has used the Soviet Union’s World War II defeat of Nazi Germany to stir patriotism and fuel dreams of a new Russian identity.

READ | Will history be kind to Vladimir Putin?

The idea of reversing the collapse of the Soviet Union strikes a chord with millions of older Russians who regret the break-up and pine for the erstwhile social justice-oriented welfare system.

And their numbers have been rising under Putin, amid growing economic concerns. For years, Putin and many Russians have lamented the blow that the Soviet Union’s dissolution dealt to Moscow’s prestige and national identity.