Russian society is waking up and pushing back against Putin’s brand of authoritarianism, with the potential to bring about a transformation of the system into one based on the rule of law.
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Andrei Ryabov is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Andrei Ryabov was a member of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Research Council and chair of the Center’s East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program. He is also the chief editor of the journal World Economy and International Relations and a leading researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations.
From 1993 to 2002, Ryabov served as deputy director of the Center for Political Science Programs at the Gorbachev Foundation. In addition, he was a political columnist for the newspaper Vek from 1998 to 2002, and was deputy editor-in-chief of the journal Vestnik of the Moscow University (Political Science series). From 1993 to 1996, he was deputy editor-in-chief of the journal Centaur. Ryabov has also worked as a senior researcher at the Department of Modern Russian Political Process at the Moscow State University and at the Center for International Programs at the Russian Independent Institute of Social and National Problems, and as an associate professor in the Sociology Department at the Moscow Mining Institute.
Ryabov is the author of Originality Instead of Modernization: Paradoxes of Russian Politics in the Post-Stabilization Era (Carnegie Moscow Center, 2005), and co-author of some other books on post-communist Russia. He is a corresponding member of the International Informatization Academy and a member of the Russian Political Science Association.
Russian society is waking up and pushing back against Putin’s brand of authoritarianism, with the potential to bring about a transformation of the system into one based on the rule of law.
Russia has been in a post-empire state for the last 20 years. There is no way back to an empire now—Russia has passed the point of no return in this respect.
The harsh verdict for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko demonstrates that Ukraine’s leadership prioritizes removing the opposition’s strongest candidate before parliamentary elections above good relations with the West.
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Enormous societal and political shifts 20 years ago opened prospects for a new, united Europe. Despite Russia’s role in this peaceful departure from totalitarianism, the country’s course in the subsequent two decades was not so straightforward. While the demolition of the Berlin Wall is no guarantee of success, democratic transformations are a necessary precondition.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a time of momentous social and political change, including in Russia, but Russia’s development followed a different path than that of many Eastern European countries.
The 1861 reform sounded the death knell for Russian feudalism, and attempts by the ruling bureaucracy’s to restore some aspects of feudal government should have no place.
Yeltsin was a revolutionary who destroyed the old order rather than building a new system. As a result, his years in power were often turbulent, but ultimately he managed to help Russia avoid collapse and civil war.
Although Russia has officially recognized South Ossetia’s independence, neither Tskhinvali nor Moscow has clearly outlined the goals of a new state project or set out the mechanisms for its further development.
The use and misuse of history as a tool for political competition and control has become an increasingly visible phenomenon in public and political life in Russia and other post-Soviet countries over recent years.