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Whither Russia? Autocracy Is Here for Now, but Is It Here to Stay?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2012

Kathryn Stoner*
Affiliation:
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University

Extract

Judging from some of the titles of recent books on Russia—for example, Richard Sakwa's The Crisis of Russian Democracy, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova's Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism inside Russia, and Tom Remington's The Politics of Inequality in Russia—all is not well 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Corruption abounds, and state institutions are weak where they should be strong or strong where they should be weak. Under Vladimir Putin, democracy has deteriorated since the heady early days of the 1990s, and the negative externalities of Russia's rocky economic transition—especially privatization—have made it so that social inequality permeates postcommunist society.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

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References

Colton, Timothy J. 1986. The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lewin, Moshe. 1991. The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar