The Soviet leadership recognized by the mid-1960s that the idea of building communism was an unachievable dream, as evidenced by internal Party debates on economic policy recorded in Politburo documents.

We are currently living through a period that resembles the Cold War in many ways, returning to themes prevalent during that era after 30 years of apparent departure following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Putin's 2007 Munich speech marked an important turning point in which he expressed bitterness and resentment toward the West, suggesting that Western policies may have catalyzed rather than merely responded to Russian revisionism.

In the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections following Yeltsin's crackdown, the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), an ultranationalist/fascist party under Vladimir Zhirinovsky, won the most seats, followed by the Communist Party, meaning that fascists and communists together commanded a large part of Russian parliamentary support.

Even if free and fair elections were held in Russia today, Renko cannot vouch that liberal democrats would win a majority, suggesting that the Russian population's preference for authoritarianism may be deeper than recent historical circumstances.

There is a fundamental dilemma in deterring Russian aggression: overly firm deterrence may actually trigger the very Russian aggression it seeks to prevent, creating a 'security spiral' where attempts to deter provoke escalation instead.

Historians and policymakers cannot definitively resolve debates about whether earlier Western toughness toward Russia (in 2013, 2014, or otherwise) would have prevented Russian aggression, since neither the 'firmness would have deterred' nor the 'firmness would have provoked' positions have empirical evidence.

Russia is a much weaker partner to China than in the past, and if China chooses to exercise power over Russia on key issues, Russia has historically claimed strategic independence and would face a difficult situation being effectively vassalized by China—which would contradict Russia's long-term strategic interests.

The idea that Russia would expand beyond Ukraine to occupy Europe or other territories is not a realistic threat because Russia does not have the military capabilities to accomplish such conquest, despite Russian victories in Ukraine.

Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in March 1985 and subsequent reforms show that major system change can happen rapidly and unexpectedly, contradicting assumptions that the Soviet Union was destined to persist indefinitely.

The Great Leap Forward under Mao Zedong in China in the late 1950s-early 1960s led to the death of at least 35 million people, perhaps more, representing a catastrophic failure of centrally planned economic policy and utopian revolutionary ambition.

Khrushchev was hopeful in the 1950s that the Soviet Union would surpass the world with its accomplishments and break through to demonstrate superiority.

In 1958, Khrushchev and Mao met in a swimming pool in Beijing and discussed a vision of absolute utopia with boundless wealth and even toilets made of gold, reflecting grandiose and unrealistic expectations.

The post-Cold War comparison to pre-WWI world is incorrect because nuclear weapons, which emerged from 1945 through late 1950s-early 1960s, have permanently changed international politics in ways that continue to affect our lives.

Soviet leaders from Stalin through Gorbachev valued status and legitimacy as much as or more than ideology; they desired to be recognized as a great power on the international stage and felt deeply insecure despite their military strength, requiring external validation particularly from the United States.

Leonid Brezhnev adopted a foreign policy centered on bringing peace to the world and seeking nuclear arms control with the United States, representing a shift from communist ideological expansion to pragmatic great-power management.

Brezhnev told Kissinger in 1973 at a hunting lodge near Moscow that the Soviet Union's objective was to 'manage the world together with the United States,' reflecting an aspiration to co-manage global affairs rather than unilateral domination, though the Soviets lacked the economic means to realize this ambition.

Modern Russia, like the Soviet Union, possesses a sense of 'special entitlement to Greatness' based on historical achievements (space exploration, World War II victory, nuclear weapons) but lacks the economic and cultural resources to translate this into actual global influence, creating a chronic mismatch between aspirations and reality.

In 1968, Soviet Politburo member Yuri Andropov wrote a memorandum to Leonid Brezhnev stating 'we're losing the Cold War' due to inadequate investment in education, lagging R&D compared to the United States, and lower labor efficiency.

The Soviet Union continued searching for a coherent national identity and ideology throughout the 1980s as communism lost credibility, which created a vacuum that contributed to the rise of nationalism in Soviet republics and ultimately to the USSR's disintegration in 1991.