The veteran Soviet dissident, Alexander Zinoviev, has explained why he is returning to his native Russia after an exile of 20 years. "The fall of communism has been transformed into the fall of Russia. The Russian catastrophe was deliberately planned in the West. I say this because I was once involved in these plans which, under the pretext of fighting an ideology, in fact prepared the death of Russia.

Contrary to a widely held view, communism did not collapse for internal reasons. Its collapse is the greatest possible victory of the West. This colossal victory has created a planetary power. The end of communism is also the end of democracy: our era is not only post-communist, it is also post-democratic.

This is because democracy means pluralism: that requires the existence of at least two more or less equal powers.

During the Cold War there was democracy at world level, a global pluralism within which capitalism and communism coexisted.