Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center has published a new book entitled “Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story,” which we assume, like the previous books that we’ve read, will advance a gentle, moderate version of how Russia arrived to its current form of statehood.  The Financial Times has a review of the new book, emphasizing Trenin’s glass-half-full view that Russia’s transition from Soviet Empire could have been much, much messier (although all that nonsense from the nationalists about annexing South Ossetia somewhat punctures Trenin’s idea that Moscow’s imperial nostalgia is a settled matter).

Russia has mounted “one of the most stunning demilitarisations in history”, he argues, and has come to “a basic realisation of all neighbouring states as geopolitical realities”. It lauded, but ignored, the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s call for a “reorganised Russia”, taking back Belarus, Northern Kazakhstan and Ukraine to Mother Russia. Compared with such imperial hangovers as the messy and murderous withdrawing roars of France, Portugal and the UK, Russia got out of empire “unbelievably well”.