Russia continues to be caught between a need to integrate itself into the West and a desire to maintain its independence from the West.

The grand social and ideological systems that people construct for themselves invariably carry large consequences, for the environment no less than for more strictly human affairs. Among the swirl of ideas, policies, and political structures of the twentieth century, the most ecologically influential were the growth imperative and the (not unrelated) security anxiety that together dominated policy around the world. … By 1970, however, something new was afoot.