ABSTRACT
It is inaccurate to talk about Russia having endured a failed democratic transition, since it is far too early to consider the present system as the end point of Russia's post-communist evolution. The past, its selection, interpretation and dynamics, remains a contentious issue in contemporary Russian politics. Russian history demonstrates that every attempt to achieve a 'leap' into modernity in fact only delays the achievement of the desired modernisation. Post-modernism, according to Jean-Francois Lyotard, is about the end of 'meta-narratives', but the post-communist era was dominated by the grand meta-narratives of transition to democracy, modernisation theory and globalisation. The idea of 'transition to democracy' reinterpreted in a liberal form the old communist view that history has a meaning and purpose, and that the end point is intelligible to observers. Post-communist Russian politics is marked by the struggle between contrasting policies of globalization and nativisation.
