ABSTRACT
The peculiarities of crisis management policies in transitional societies are numerous, and are associated with the political, cultural and socioeconomic diversity of the geographical regions and individual nations involved. One set of factors responsible for such diversity existed long before the collapse of the Soviet Union and persists even today. Another set of factors emerged out of the collapse in 1991 (and partly in the re-emergence of Russia as a world economic and political power in the early part of the 2000s). Taken in combination, these factors are considered as major motors pushing numerous nations, including Russia, towards a qualitatively new form of polity. This chapter discusses the specificities of crisis management policies in Russia and some Eastern European and Asian nations, precipitated mostly by the latter set of factors. The three key objectives are:
to describe the changes that have occurred over the past years in organizations, policies and operations associated with managing crises;
to reveal the conditions that have allowed these changes to take place;
to highlight the implications of these changes in crisis policy for the public and other actors.
