Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
Paul Goble: Putin offers updated version of Brezhnev doctrine for post-Soviet states
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.de/...ersion-of.html
I always found the concept of the "Brezhnev Doctrine" troublesome. Was it a departure from Stalin or Khrushchev? Indeed, Andropov was involved in both Hungary in '56 and Czechoslovakia in '68. As for Stalin, his Red Army put down the East Germans, Poles, Romanians and the peoples of the Baltics, as well as the Ukrainians, from 1944 to his death.

Moreover, there is a difference between say a "New Course of Socialism" or "Socialism with a Human Face", non-aligned independence and defection to adversarial/rival trading bloc and military alliance.

Putin is no reincarnation of Woodrow Wilson; neither is he of the Soviet leaders who preceded him. Also note that Yeltsin was not the pushover that he is imagined today, and he laid the foundations of or began all of the conflicts that Putin is immersed in today.