As Peter Conradi explains in Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War, there were certainly genuine expectations that a new entente cordiale might be established between Moscow and the Western powers that the old Soviet Union had tried so hard, and for so long, to destroy. Nor was this optimism misplaced, so long as Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms had hastened the demise of the communist bloc, retained control.

Margaret Thatcher famously described Gorbachev as a man with whom she “could do business”, a recommendation that President George HW Bush took up when he travelled to Moscow in 1991 for what was billed as the first post-Cold War summit between the Russians and the Americans. Gorbachev was so delighted by Bush’s positive response to the idea that the two countries should work together to sort out the world’s problems that he hailed their discussion at the Grand Kremlin Palace as “a moment of glory” for his new approach to foreign policy.