The Anomalous Time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin

Is Confrontation with Russia Inevitable? (Fareed Zakaria) from CNN  
"... it does appear to me, looking back, that the Russia of the late 1980s and early 1990s – of Gorbachev and Yeltsin – may have been a special conciliatory moment in its history, a time when Russia was weak, its leadership enlightened, and its populace worn out by decades of communist failure."