ABSTRACT

What has happened to Russia since the collapse of communism in 1991 and where is the country going in the new century? Russia has escaped widespread social disorder or political collapse, but few observers would argue that the situation has stabilized. Seventeen distinguished scholars from the United States, Russia, and Europe analyze the institutions, social forces, and ideas that are transforming Russia and are, in turn, being transformed in Russia today. The first multidisciplinary assessment of the Yeltsin era, Russia in the New Century: Stability or Disorder? focuses on superpresidentialism, the Constitutional Court, the military, the virtual economy, the network society, organized crime, the new entrepreneurs, workers, survival networks, Russian political parties and nationalism, and the crisis in Dagestan. Thirteen essays and the editors' introduction offer new perspectives on Russia's prospects for stability and disorder in the twenty-first century.

part |12 pages

Introduction

part I|88 pages

Politics

chapter 2|20 pages

When More Is Less

Superexecutive Power and Political Underdevelopment in Russia

chapter 3|24 pages

Personalism Versus Proceduralism

Boris Yeltsin and the Institutional Fragility of the Russian System

chapter 4|19 pages

Russia’s Second Constitutional Court

Politics, Law, and Stability

chapter 5|23 pages

Institutional Decline in the Russian Military

Exit, Voice, and Corruption

part II|71 pages

Economy

chapter 6|23 pages

Stability and Disorder

An Evolutionary Analysis of Russia’s Virtual Economy

chapter 8|14 pages

Organized Crime and Social Instability in Russia

The Alternative State, Deviant Bureaucracy, and Social Black Holes

part III|89 pages

Society

chapter 9|26 pages

Russia’s New Entrepreneurs

chapter 11|31 pages

Domestic Involution

How Women Organize Survival in a North Russian City

part IV|95 pages

The Nation

chapter 13|36 pages

Serving Mother Russia

The Communist Left and Nationalist Right in the Struggle for Power, 1991–1998