ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses some of the major challenges faced by the strategic region in flux, and by the new states born out of the sweeping political changes that have enveloped the region for six years. It discusses the process of constitution-making in Russia and Ukraine, the two largest Soviet successor states, whose future will critically influence that of the region as a whole. The book argues that Russia’s democratic prospects today are best understood in terms of the moderate revolutionary revival signifying the end of a very long revolutionary process. It shows that shock therapy in Russia failed because it was economically unworkable, politically unacceptable, and one of its key assumptions, massive foreign assistance, turned out to be untenable. The book suggests that shock therapy was never even applied in Russia, because its implementation was politically infeasible.
