I once read a text on the internet, some academic paper to be honest, that essentially said this about the post-Communist world: Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" was right, but with a twist, history has indeed ended, but geography and culture definitely haven't. The author said that European nations became more European and Asian nations more Asian etc. Visegrad Group became more and more like Germany and Austria with the occassional setbacks, the Stans became more and more like e.g. Iran. The more proximate a country is to some kind of neighbor, it would become more and more like that neighbor. Talk about leveling to a level it had become without having turned communist in the first place, but...
...this doesn't answer the question what could've been expected of Russia to become. Of course, you may say that China after Mao became much like Chiang's China could've been. But what kind of "neighbor" that didn't exist could Russia have turned into? Is Putinism really the natural state Russia is supposed to be, a grandchild of an authoritarian way Russia could've seen after the White victory in the Russian Civil War? Or is it rather natural for Russia to be compared to, well, the 1970's democracies in the Med with their post-war right-wing authoritarianism? Or is Turkey a comparable nation with its many coup d'états?
TL;DR: What kind of state would be plausible for Russia to adapt to in the long run? If at all?
...this doesn't answer the question what could've been expected of Russia to become. Of course, you may say that China after Mao became much like Chiang's China could've been. But what kind of "neighbor" that didn't exist could Russia have turned into? Is Putinism really the natural state Russia is supposed to be, a grandchild of an authoritarian way Russia could've seen after the White victory in the Russian Civil War? Or is it rather natural for Russia to be compared to, well, the 1970's democracies in the Med with their post-war right-wing authoritarianism? Or is Turkey a comparable nation with its many coup d'états?
TL;DR: What kind of state would be plausible for Russia to adapt to in the long run? If at all?