sheer size: both in land and population. It can afford to take losses others couldn’t. Consider these huge losses: it went from a high of 290 million people in the late Soviet Union to a mere 148 million under the Russian Federation (equivalent to losing the population of the United Kingdom almost twice, and nearly 50% of its entire population). On top of that, it went from some 8.65 million square miles of land to 6.5 million square miles of territory; equivalent to losing about 47 states the size of Germany.

How many other nation-states have lost half their people and a third of their territory in less than two years and lived to tell the tale?

It was inevitable that Russian power in the aftermath of such a defeatthe country as a dictatorship. But they could set up many a straw man. When the Communists lost the ’96 election, it was the end of them as a true alternative to the new rulers in the Kremlin. From that point on, the Kremlin, dominated by former KGB men, began to use their old spy craft to set up puppet parties, NGOs, and other forms of “opposition” that could be neutered whenever they got too serious.

The central geopolitical rule of a strong, dominating central government was reinforced. Concurrently, Russia’s army started fighting better. By 1999, Yeltsin was preparing to be pushed aside, and from the ranks emerged Vladimir Putin. One of his first major acts was to invade Chechnya and put an end to secessionism there.

Putin utilized all