ABSTRACT
Anticipating the political future anywhere is chancy, even under the most stable conditions, and Russia hardly meets that criterion. Many observers, hopeful about the prospects for democracy when President Boris Yeltsin dominated the scene in 1992 and 1993, turned pessimistic about Russian politics after Yeltsin dissolved and shelled the Parliament in the fall of 1993 and went on to impose a constitution with authoritarian presidential prerogatives. The use of historical analogy to interpret the present scene in Russia largely involves comparisons with earlier reform eras in Russian history. The moderate revolutionary revival in Russia was distinguished by its gradual, step-by-step, and largely non-violent character. In the outside world the reality of authoritarianism represented by Yeltsin and his entourage began to overtake the democratic faith in Russia’s president. In some symbolic respects, after he liquidated the USSR, Yeltsin even harked back to the 1905–1907 compromise between democratic revolution and autocracy.
