ABSTRACT
Scholars consider that democratic consolidation in post-Communist states is path dependent because of the persistence of particular institutional and attitudinal legacies inherited from the Communist era (Linz and Stepan, 1996; Offe, 1996). By path dependent, we do not just mean that history is important, but that elites and policy-makers are locked into an equilibrium which they find hard to break out of (Pierson, 2000). The concern of political scientists and reformers is that the ‘democratic consolidation’ of transitional regimes is hindered by the presence of Communist era elites who have retained their core values and have recirculated into positions of power. Indeed, it would be extraordinary if the longevity of the institutions, organizations and modes of rule of 70 years of Communist monism did not leave an imprint on the values and behaviour of the Russian elites. Nevertheless, while the Communist system disintegrated with surprising rapidity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is not clear whether the norms internalized by elites operating under the ‘command-administrative’ system have changed along with the political system or whether the values and assumptions of the old pattern of government have continued to be influential.
