Russia, Where to? From Metallica on Red Square to Putin in the Kremlin

By: Ahmed Taleb

On September 28, 1991, one million young Russians at a military airfield in Moscow screamed at the top of their lungs: "Enter Sandman". Above them, Soviet Army helicopters circled, and around them, soldiers in uniform didn't know if they were guarding the concert or guarding the collapse of their own country. The band Metallica was playing, and the Soviet Union was taking its last breaths. Just two and a half months later, the red flag fell from the Kremlin.

That concert was not just a concert. It was the funeral of the Cold War.

Who is Putin, who came after the noise?

If you understand who Vladimir Putin is, you will understand where Russia is going.

Putin is not a politician who came from elections, but an intelligence officer who came from the shadows. Born in 1952 in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) to a poor family that survived the Nazi siege. He joined the KGB at age 23 and worked as a spy in Dresden, East Germany, watching the West from behind the Wall.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Putin saw with his own eyes how all his files burned in the furnace of the Soviet embassy in Dresden, and how Moscow left him alone with no orders. That moment created his doctrine: A weak state gets humiliated, only a strong state is respected.

Boris Yeltsin brought him in 1999 as a "loyal employee" to protect his family from corruption charges. But the loyal employee stayed in power for 25 years. His philosophy was summed up in one sentence he said in 2005: "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." He does not want to bring back communism, he wants to bring back greatness. He wants Russia to be an empire that is feared, even if it is hated.

When the ice of the Cold War melted... what entered Moscow?

After the Metallica concert, the doors of Moscow, closed for 70 years, opened.

The first symbol was a year before Metallica: On January 31, 1990, the first McDonald's opened on Pushkin Square. 30,000 Russians waited in a line kilometers long in the snow to taste an American burger. American newspapers wrote at the time: "The Cold War ended in the McDonald's line."

Then the companies poured in: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Nike, Adidas, Levi's, Mercedes, Shell and British Petroleum. Russians thought they would become Americans in five years. Moscow in the 90s was a crazy city - with new millionaires driving a Mercedes, and Soviet pensioners selling their military medals on the street to buy bread.

The two engineers who warmed relations and then burned them

Russia today cannot be understood without two men:

1. Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991): The man who wanted to reform communism and killed it. He launched two words that changed the world: Perestroika (economic restructuring) and Glasnost (openness and freedom of speech). He stopped the arms race, pulled the army out of Afghanistan, allowed the Germans to tear down the Berlin Wall, and shook hands with Reagan and Bush. The West gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, the Russians never forgave him. He died in 2022 lonely, considered by most Russians as the man who squandered an empire.

2. Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999): The man who wanted to make Russia into America. He was a close friend of Bill Clinton, allowed American advisers to sit in the Kremlin, and applied "shock therapy": selling all state companies in rigged auctions. Under him, the oligarchs were born, the mafia spread, the ruble collapsed, and Russia begged for loans from the IMF. He appeared on television drunk and dancing. Russians remembered freedom from him, but they also remembered humiliation and poverty. That's why when the young, athletic, serious Putin came, who does not smile and does not drink, they saw him as a savior.

Does Russia resemble Iran politically?

This is the most important question in your article, and the answer is: yes, with different clothes.

It is true that Russia is an Orthodox nationalist state, and Iran is a Shiite Islamic theocracy, but in politics they are twins:

First: A siege mentality. Both are convinced that America and the West are conspiring to overthrow their regime. Both build their legitimacy on the idea of "we are besieged, so we must rally around the leader."

Second: A sanctions economy. Iran has lived under sanctions since 1979, Russia became the most sanctioned country in the world since 2022. Both sell oil and gas on the black market, bypass the dollar, and rely on China as a last customer.

Third: The deep state. In Russia, it is not parliament that rules, but the Federal Security Service FSB, heir to the KGB. In Iran, it is not the president who rules, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In both cases, the economy, politics and media are in the hands of the military.

Fourth: Exporting chaos. Iran exports the "Axis of Resistance" from Beirut to Sana'a, Russia exports the "Axis against American hegemony" from Donetsk to Damascus and Mali. Both find legitimacy abroad when they fail at home.

The only difference is that Iran wants to spread a revolution, and Russia wants to spread revenge for the humiliation of the 90s.

So where to?

In 2022, after the war in Ukraine, the great paradox happened. All the companies that entered Moscow after the Metallica concert left. McDonald's became "Vkusno i Tochka", Shell and BP sold their fields at a loss, Nike and Adidas closed their stores. Even Metallica's music was once again considered "enemy music".

Russia has come full circle. It started in 1991 with a million young people who wanted to become Americans, and ended in 2026 with a million young people who want to defeat America.

Today, Russia does not want to join the West as Gorbachev and Yeltsin wanted. It wants to destroy the idea that the West is the only center of the world. Where is it going? It is not going anywhere. It is trying to make the whole world come to Russia.

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