The new book continues the theme of Trenin’s The End of Eurasia: Russia Between Geopolitics and Globalization, published two years ago, but enlarges its horizons. Whereas most champions of Russia’s integration with the West and critics of Russia’s behavior focus on Kremlin politics, Trenin sees the impersonal forces of economics, and above all property rights, as the locomotives of history. He believes that Russia’s openness to the outside world and the growth of Russian capitalism will gradually transform Russian society. In his view, over time capitalism will create the need for rule of law, and the middle class it will produce will lay the foundation for a democratic polity.

Trenin cites numerous parallels between different epochs in an attempt to elaborate options for the future. He comes to the paradoxical conclusion that Russia, as a result of its capitalist evolution followed by a liberal and democratic breakthrough, has a real chance of becoming Western (in the sense of its institutions), but will probably not become European (i.e. a member of the EU). That is, Russia will not integrate formally into the West, but Russians’ habits and predilections as well as domestic institutions will gradually come to resemble those of the West, thanks to identity-form-ing economic life and interests. And this would be one answer to the dilemma of integration vs. identity.