Identity

Over the course of the book Putin Country, identity is brought up more than a few times. Afterall it had been years since it was last seen as Russia. With this new identity comes a need for many changes around what it meant to be a Russian. The last paragraph of chapter 18 also brings up an analogy of a meteor crash and its similarity to the affects Russia has felt. If the idea that a new Russia is to be found from the ruins of the old, could this just be a long process that they are expecting to happen overnight? Or is it the methods in which the founding of a new identity occurred that are the cause for such unrest.