The study explores Russia's politics at an important phase in the life of the Russian state. Focusing on the different types of cooperative interactions between Russia and the fourteen other republics of the former Soviet Union from mid 1990-late 91, the book brings out the nature of the Russian effort to reconfigure its ties with these republics.At a time when the Soviet state structure was crumbling, Russia went ahead with a well articulated plan to manage the collapse of the Soviet empire with an aim to limit the damage to the interests of the Russians.As the author concludes, Russia's inter-republican cooperation was a carefully thoughtout policy to undermine the Gorbachev government's effort to control centre-periphery relations and manage the uncontrolled break-up of the Soviet Union. Russia signalled, through its cooperative relations with the republics, that it was willing to accept the republics as sovereign and view its own interactions with them as inter-state relations.