ABSTRACT
In the immediate aftermath of the monumental events of 1991, Western scholars offered widely divergent assessments of the country's trajectory. Whereas some anticipated progress toward democratization and marketization, many others made ominous predictions that Russia might not survive the coming winter. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores what path will Russia take in the new century. Will the combination of racketeering and free-marketization eventually lead to a stable economy? Does the weakness of the Russian state portend greater or lesser public unrest and defiance of that state by regional elites? The book examines the problem of stability through a case study of the most violence-prone region in Russia, the North Caucasus. Both democracy and stability hinge on the creation of reliable venues into which collective action may be channeled.
