The fates of electoralism and militarism are entwined. In conditions of renewed cold war, the choices on offer and the potential range of policies and programmes are constrained by national security considerations and the shifting alignments of bloc politics. The voice of constituencies who believe that peace and development should be the priority remain unrepresented.

The cult of personality that the Soviet authorities built around Lenin after his death was fully justified. The revolution of November 1917 really was Lenin’s revolution, and the communist system really was Lenin’s creation. Great impersonal forces matter. But so too does individual agency. The life of Vladimir Lenin proves the point. For good or evil, he changed the path of history.

The peace in Europe has been lost, decisively and for our generation almost certainly irrevocably, writes political scientist Richard Sakwa. As always, a peace lost here has global consequences. Equally, there was nothing predetermined about its loss. It was the result of decisions and calculations that in the end undermined the underlying rationality.

Despite sanctions, threats from France, and foreign pushback against the nationalist reclamation of resource wealth, West African states are charting a new course, one of increased economic and security sovereignty. As Owen Schalk explains, this means increasing control of key resources and the forcible end of French military and economic dominance in the region.

War has so many variables that attempting to predict its every twist and turn is somewhat foolish. At some point, the balance of power in any given conflict may shift so overwhelmingly in favour of one side or another that one can safely put one’s head above the parapet and predict the outcome. But in the case of Ukraine, we are far from reaching that point.

As Alexander Hill writes, Russia is a long way from being beaten and in many ways is in a stronger position today than it was at the end of last year. But getting that information out into the mainstream press is becoming more and more difficult—perhaps suggesting that the Western crusade against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, is not going to plan.

The victory of Geert Wilders in the Dutch general elections should provoke intense self-reflection in the European Union. Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom won 37 seats of 150, becoming the largest party in the House of Representatives and the latest right-wing challenger to ‘Merkelism,’ named for long-time German chancellor Angela Merkel.

A full reckoning of what transpired during Euromaidan requires one to look at both internal and external factors, namely the divisions that existed within Ukrainian society, the peculiar ideology of Ukraine’s pro-European liberal intelligentsia, and the manner in which Ukraine became a battleground for competing geopolitical interests.

Many understand that the House of Commons’ decision to honour Yaroslav Hunka should not be treated as a one-off lapse in judgement. Rather, as Owen Schalk explains, it was a shocking public exposure of the deep-rootedness of World War II revisionism in Canada, which is far more widespread than one official’s ill-advised invite to an old man in his riding.

There are events that at the time seem to portend one thing but years later take on a very different hue. So it is with the dramatic political crisis that erupted in Russia 30 years ago this week, a crisis that ended with tanks of the Russian army blasting the country’s parliament, the Supreme Soviet, into submission.