Preface

doi:10.12987/yale/9780300084986.002.0006

Front Matter

Preface

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https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300084986.002.0006

Pages

ix–xiv

Published:

May 2001

Extract

In the final decade of the twentieth century tumultuous political change occurred in Russia. Both the Soviet regime and the Soviet state collapsed. In Russia, largest by far of the fifteen newly sovereign successor states, drastic political and economic reforms launched at the beginning of the decade were stalled by the end. Boris Yeltsin's abrupt resignation as president of the Russian Federation on New Year's Eve 1999 left to his successor, Vladimir Putin, a state gravely weakened by maladministration, corruption, and mistrust. The promise of a democratic Russia became one of those unfulfilled hopes for which Yeltsin sought the forgiveness of his countrymen in his resignation speech. Many Russian and Western observers questioned whether the notion of “democratic transition” had any relevance whatever to the changes in Russia's state structures since the fall of communism, seeing them as varieties of power grabs. In the economic arena, as Thane Gustafson notes, analysts tend to treat Russia's economy either as in transition to market capitalism or as having been taken over by powerful vested interests that have stifled any further opening of the economy to competition and free markets.¹ At times the transition versus takeover debate gets sidetracked by definitional disputes or is papered over by qualifying Russia as a “democracy with adjectives.”² The real problem, however, is finding out how Russia's postcommunist institutions and processes actually work. Only by seeing how power is distributed and deployed can we begin to make meaningful comparisons between Russia and other postauthoritarian regimes. At some point, the analyst must descend from the airy world of terminological disputes and investigate how politics actually works.

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