But, while a widespread consensus held that communism was nothing but a dead end, China’s economic success, and the authoritarian backlash in Russia following Boris Yeltsin’s departure from the Kremlin a decade ago, prompted a more pessimistic analysis. Theories of “democratic rollback” and of a resurgence of “authoritarian great powers” surfaced to unveil the potential of systems that combined nationalism and state-led growth-yielding capitalism.