ABSTRACT
The authoritarian governments of the former Soviet Union appeared increasingly vulnerable in the wake of the Rose and Orange revolutions. It was not simply the temporal proximity of these events that was worrying, though that certainly was important. Rather, the similarities in the way in which the regimes were ousted and the apparent connections between the cases raised the prospect that these ‘colour revolutions’ were the beginning of a new democratic wave, one which might call into question the survival of autocratic governments throughout the region. This concern intensified after the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which reinforced the belief that a broader trend was developing.1 Democratic contagion, it appeared, had infected the former Soviet Union.
