ABSTRACT
According to the World Bank, in 1998 Russia ranked sixteenth among the world's largest economies, just behind Mexico and several notches below the Netherlands by 2008 it ranked sixth, just behind Germany and ahead of the United Kingdom. While Vladimir Putin intensely focuses on strengthening the Russian state and its control over the economy, he devoted considerably less attention to Russia's social problems, declining population and health care crisis. Russia was as dangerous for people directly involved in human rights work as for journalists who reported on their activities. Although Chechnya, where three of the murders took place, was the most dangerous part of the country, nowhere in Russia were those who defied the regime safe. A decade into the twenty first century it is clear that, in contrast to what many observers anticipated or hoped for at the start of the 1990s, Russia's emergence from Communism did not put it on a path to democracy and free market capitalism.
