“The collapse of the USSR is the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” President Vladimir Putin in nationally televised speech on April 25, 2005.

          Russia and energy sources, first oil and then both oil and gas, have been inextricably connected in a way unmatched by any other major power in the history of the world. The United States and other developed countries, such as Japan and members of the European Union, are both heavy users of energy yet devoid of adequate indigenous resources. The search and control of energy resources have been central to major world conflicts, including both World Wars and other civil wars and global conflicts. Geopolitics of oil and gas power modern life and control trans-national relationships. Countries with insufficient domestic petroleum supplies are inherently vulnerable, and politicians campaign on promises of increasing their nation’s “energy independence.” Meanwhile, political militancy by certain energy-rich nations such as Venezuela, Iran and increasingly Russia has legitimized their regimes and political leaders.
          Loaded with formidable energy resources, Russia, has used its natural endowment as a pivotal tool to further political and strategic aims before, during and after the Soviet period., One of the least understood but enormously significant examples of this is the role that oil played in the post-World War II USSR. In terms of international influence, the 1960s was the golden era of the Soviet Union. Surrounded by its newly acquired satellite states the country was emerging as a counter-balancing force to the United States and other western capitalist powers, some whose global influence was entering a period of relative decline. Ideologically, the USSR painted itself as the champion of the so called non-aligned world, gaining credibility as a supporter of their anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles. To the idealists of the world, the dream of a society without poverty and class-based domination evoked admiration for the Soviet creed. It also enhanced the emotional and intellectual appeal of a system that seemingly provided an alternative to the cruel realities of unfettered capitalism. What these romantics could not see was the problematic machinery used to run the Soviet Union and its drain on everyday lives of the people living in the communist bloc.
          What also many could not see is that oil would bankroll the U.S.S.R, when copious quantities of oil were discovered exactly when the country seemed to need it most, time and time again. In the last fifteen years of Soviet rule, petroleum was often wielded as an antidote for the degeneration of the USSR. In the end, all it did was mask the real problems.
          Under President Vladimir Putin, post-Soviet Russia has recovered much of its rightful position and power bestowed upon it by its energy resources, but only after a series of misadventures. What Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev could not do with nuclear weapons and raw military power, Putin is doing with oil and gas in what arguably can be called energy imperialism.