Maria Lipman

Enormous societal and political shifts 20 years ago opened prospects to a new, united Europe and put an end to the Cold War and the nuclear standoff. Despite Russia’s enormous role in this peaceful break from totalitarianism, the country’ course in the subsequent two decades was not so straightforward. The soon-to-be-published book project focuses on the results of Russia’s and other post-communist nations’ transformations, comparing Russia’s experience with that of the Eastern European states.
The book’s authors, who include leading Carnegie Moscow Center experts, pose the question: what was the reason behind Russia’s stalled reforms? They lay out the argument that a policy that leads to dismantling of civil liberties in the country and uses strong-arm tactics externally has no prospects. The demolition of the Berlin Wall is no guarantee of success, but democratic transformations are a necessary precondition for the country’s modernization and an authoritative foreign policy of a modern state, as well as its citizens’ well-being.
The Carnegie Moscow Center’s website has published the first articles of the soon-to-be-published collection.

Press release

The book is devoted to the analysis of various aspects of post-communist politics in modern Russia. The authors focus on changes in the political system which have occurred during the presidency of Vladimir Putin. In their opinion, these changes are not accidental deviations from the process of democratization which characterized domestic political development in Russia during the 1990’s. They are rather logical results of a process of disintegration of the previous, soviet societal system, as well as consequences of some authoritarian tendencies of the Yeltsin era. In the opinion of the authors, the present system has limited potential to self-perpetuate. At the same time, in being deeply ingrained in the domestic political tradition, the system is not unique, and by its very nature and modes of functioning is very close to political systems of other post-soviet states.