ABSTRACT
Time has finally run out for communism. But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled. May we not be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty. The democratic paradox was there from the start: a parliament was elected on the same day that the constitution creating the new parliament was adopted. Administrative rationality trumped the openness of electoral outcomes, a pattern of ‘phoney democracy’ that has shaped Russian politics ever since. Instead of the largely ceremonial presidency, as in the Czech Republic or Hungary, Russia found itself with an executive presidency on the American and French model. In Russia the relationship between the constitution and the nation is far more ambiguous, reflecting the persistent syndrome of displaced sovereignty. The basis of constitutional order is not the sovereign people but regimes of various types standing between the people and the state.
