The most eminent mediocrity of Russia’s political class has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” In our view, it produced above all the greatest psychiatric catastrophe in the minds of those who modestly style themselves the Russian political elite, including that very “thinker.” For decades, one obsession has united these shell‑shocked figures: “domination in the post‑Soviet space,” the creation of a “zone of privileged interests,”