Democracy and Russia

How could the West have better prepared for the fall of communism and gained a clearer picture of Russia's new political landscape? By cultivating an awareness, Nicolai Petro argues, of the deep democratic aspirations of the Russian people since Muscovite times. Petro traces the long history of those aspirations, recovering for us an understanding crucial to our formation of successful foreign policy toward Russia. Petro's analysis includes many surprising and incisive observations. In a look at the Russian Orthodox Church, he details its long history of support for opposition sentiment during both Tsarist and Soviet times and its support for democracy today. He also explores the character and power of contemporary Russian nationalism and traces its origins to the neo-Slavophile national identity that took its shape as a challenge to Bolshevik oppression. Delineating Russia's postcommunist political parties, the author reveals their roots in prerevolutionary times and explains how this continuitymakes Russian political aspirations far more predictable than is commonly assumed. Awakening us to Russia's historical involvement in the democratic quest that lies at the heart of Western values, Petro opens a path for a more meaningful, more productive, understanding of modern Russia.

The Russian Federation on December 12, 1993, held its first national election since the collapse of Soviet Communism. The election, to a new, two-chamber parliament, was accompanied by a constitutional referendum. It followed months of wrangling over political and economic reform and a violent showdown in Moscow between President Boris Yeltsin and his opponents. After a bitter campaign in which the government frequently changed the rules of the game, Russians narrowly endorsed Yeltsin's draft constitution, but turned out in large numbers for nationalistic and socialistic opposition parties, leaving Russia's Choice, the party favored by the president, with a small minority of the seats. The contest, with its deeply contradictory results, was a watershed in the evolution of Russia's fledgling democracy. Growing Pains is a detailed study of the 1993 election and of its implications for Russian development and for the country's relations with the West. Several chapters, relying on comprehensive surveys of the Russian electorate, analyze the election process and how social structure and citizen opinions shaped voter choice. Others examine the campaigns of the major parties, the nature and consequences of electoral rules, and the roles of the mass media. Still others examine the campaign and its outcome at the grassroots in ten regions of Russia, from the western provinces to the Pacific coast, demonstrating the significance of local context and local elites and power structures in Russia's transitional politics.

What impact has Russia's chosen path of reform had on the development of law after the collapse of the communist regime? This collection of essays examines how Russia's distinctive traditions of law-& lawlessness-are shaping the current struggle for economic reform in the country. Nine renowned scholars, chosen from specialties in history, political science, law, & economics, expertly address the question.

This collection by 14 American and European experts provides an informed critical assessment of parallel processes of economic and political transformation from orthodox Marxist-Leninist regimes to contrasting forms of market economies and democratic governance in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and eastern Germany.

This is a systematic comparison of environmental activism - and, more broadly, collective democratic action - in Russia and Hungary. It aims to shed light on the differences between these relatively antithetical regimes.

The transformation from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia cannot be fully understood without taking the elites into full consideration. Elites and Democratic Development in Russia examines how elites support and challenge democracy and why they are crucial to Russian democracy in particular. In this innovative volume, twelve respected scholars investigate how elites have affected the transition from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia. They discuss how the elites' degree of integration on national and regional levels may constitute the main condition for the consolidation of the emerging political regime and interpret the complex post-communist elite patterns of behaviour and attitudes into a theoretical framework of elitist democracy. This book will appeal to those interested in democratization, elites, post-Soviet Russia and post-communist studies.

This book presents a fresh view of Russian political change in the Gorbachev and early post-Soviet periods not by examining perestroika and glasnost in and of themselves, but by investigating the autonomous political organizations that responded to liberalization. Extensive study of these political groups, in Moscow and several provincial cities, has led Steven Fish to conclude that they were shaped to a far greater degree by the nature of the Soviet state than by socioeconomic modernization, political culture, native psychology, or Russian historical tradition. He proposes a novel and theoretically sophisticated approach to understanding social movements, political party formation, regime change and democratization in general. An intelligent, subtle, first-hand account of the years after Gorbachev opened the door with perestroika.--Foreign Affairs An original and provocative study.... Drawing on his scrupulous analysis of group-formation in a number of Russian cities, ... Fish re- evaluates received views about the Soviet system.--Robert Shannan Peckham, New Statesman & Society A smart book that speaks to the concerns not only of area specialists but to students of democratic transition around the world.--Philip G. Roeder, Political Science Quarterly

Defining liberalism as the broadly defined political theory based on the institutionalization of individual and civil rights; the self-organization of society; and the limitation of the power of the state in political, economic, and social life, the author analyzes the demise of communism in Soviet Russia and the attempt to consolidate democracy in post-Soviet Russia as part of a single project to institutionalize the foundations of political liberalism. After separately examining civil society, political society, postcommunist state formation, and political culture, she argues for viewing social processes in Russia as displaying the continuity of a real liberal project that began with the Gorbachev regime and, while still weak, continues today.