Les grandes espérances: la Grande-Bretagne et l’inclusion de la Russie soviétique et post-soviétique dans le système de sécurité européen (1984-1994)

The article looks at the inclusion/exclusion of Russia in regional organisations at the end of the Cold War and shortly afterwards, with particular reference to European and Atlantic integration. What was London's perception and role in relation to Mikhail Gorbachev's initiatives in the years when the Soviet Union could still be perceived as a superpower, albeit in decline, and then in relation to the Russian Federation in the early years of the Yeltsin administration? Were there elements of continuity or discontinuity in the Thatcher-Major transition in 1990? To what extent did British policy influence European policies in the Atlantic sphere and at the very delicate moment of the creation of the European Union? The article also examines the interpretative hypothesis that points to the failure of a strong European federal subject to take off in the early 1990s as one of the main causes of the international disorder of the last thirty years.