Politics & Power Quote by Jeffrey Sachs

“Mercifully ended” is doing a lot of political work. Sachs compresses a cataclysm into a single moral adjective, nudging the reader toward a clean narrative arc: the Soviet Union as a doomed, oppressive project whose dissolution should be understood less as tragedy than as relief. It’s a rhetorically efficient move, and a revealing one, because it pre-loads the policy debate. If the USSR’s end is mercy, then the real drama isn’t loss or continuity; it’s the messy, urgent task of reconstruction - and the moral obligation of outsiders to help.

The line “Russian drama began” reframes history as a stage play with a clear opening night: late 1991. That framing sidelines the long prehistory of Soviet stagnation, reform attempts, and nationalist pressures, while elevating the post-collapse period as the decisive arena where choices, advisers, and institutions matter. It also centers Russia even as Sachs acknowledges “14 other new countries,” mirroring the West’s frequent tendency to treat the post-Soviet space as a Russian story with footnotes.

Then comes the economist’s cadence: “historical, economic, financial, social and political.” The list reads like a comprehensive audit, implying that failure could not be pinned on one variable; the entire operating system was being replaced. Subtextually, it anticipates arguments Sachs has long been associated with: that the scale of the challenge required rapid, coordinated stabilization and substantial Western support. By stressing that “every one” faced the same profound test, he distributes sympathy broadly - but also normalizes upheaval as an expected cost of exit, not necessarily as an avoidable policy outcome.