ABSTRACT
In assessing the experience of post-Communist changes in more than two decades, one might argue that the dilemma of simultaneity was solved more or less successfully in most Eastern European countries, which established democratic political regimes and market economies and then became member states of the European Union. As far as Russia is concerned, its trajectory of economic and political transformations has resembled a zigzag. The period of 1985-1991 in the Soviet Union was marked by fundamental liberalization and democratization, the emergence of competitive elections, parliamentarianism and political parties. At the same time, market reforms were conducted quite inconsistently, overdue radical changes were postponed again and again, and in the end the mounting economic crisis contributed to the total collapse of the Soviet system. In 1991-1998 the sequence of changes was quite the opposite: the market reforms launched by the government were accompanied by a deep and protracted recession, and although the Russian economy attained growth in the 2000s, it probably cannot
be currently characterized as a liberal market economy. On the contrary, democratization was suspended in the 1990s, then stopped, and in the 2000s Russia turned to an electoral authoritarian regime (Åslund, 2007; Gel’man et al., 2014; Treisman, 2011).
