[RKV]

"for the past three centuries, the Russian elite has identified itself wholeheartedly with European culture and values" - not so sure about that. Russian wants western technology and aspires to western power, not to western values. It wants eastern values - namely despotism, at least the elites in Russia, do. The long suffering people of Russia haven't done too well by the arrangement.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

The Russian elite were tossed out of power forcibly because they ruled autocratically. They are almost as much to blame for the rise of Communist government and the Soviet Union as those who actively worked for the USSR's realization.

And now the new Russian elite seem to be moving back toward Russia's traditional oligarchic, autocratic form of government and society/culture.