An essay by Italy’s leading historian of the USSR sheds new light on the ongoing tragic events.

Why did Putin think he could conquer Ukraine in a few days with the consent of the Russians but also of the local po­pulation? What does ‘denazification’ mean? To explain this tragedy that is changing the world, it is necessary to go back to some essential passages in the history of the 20th century before and after 1991. A complex story, which starts from Ukraine’s relationship with Lenin’s Soviet power and moves on to the Holodomor, the terrible famine caused by Stalin that claimed more than four million victims in Ukraine in ‘32-’33. It is a story that continues with the Second World War and the Nazi occupation and continues with the end of the USSR and the turmoil of the 1990s. This was followed by Putin’s authoritarian turn, founded on the consensus of an ideology of power rooted in Russian history and shared by a ruling class formed between Soviet decline and the reassertion of state power. An ideology that drives Putin to despise an opulent and corrupt West in economic and demographic decline and that makes him think the time has come to restore Russia’s role as a major world power.