-"Dictators have ruled Russia for centuries," writes Hoover Fellow Michael McFaul in his new book Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001). "Czars and Communist Party chiefs were in charge for so long that it became difficult to imagine a different kind of political system in Russia."
How did democracy emerge from this reluctant ground? McFaul explores this question, and its ramifications, in a detailed analysis of Russia's revolutionary transition from communism to democracy. With an informed eye he assesses the transition critically, weighing successes and failures equally.
"Russia's transition from communism to democracy has not been smooth, fast, or entirely successful," McFaul notes. "Comparatively speaking, Russia has been in transition from one type of regime to another for a much longer period than that experienced by most other modern states that have made recent transitions to democracy."
McFaul's book looks at the Gorbachev period (1985–1991), the First Russian Republic (1991–1993), and the Second Russian Republic (1993–present). He accounts for the failure of Gorbachev's efforts to create a "new set of rules that was accepted by all major political actors," and traces "a similar pattern of institutional design from above that eventually ended in polarization, confrontation, and failure of reform" in the First Russian Republic. He also explains why the political rules of the game became more institutionalized during the Second Russian Republic than in the previous two periods.
The importance of McFaul's book cannot be overestimated; his analysis of the modern Russian politics is timely. He identifies not only the trajectories of change that are already clear in Russia, but also "the factors that may alter the direction of regime consolidation," an issue of vital importance as a new era of U.S.–Russian relations unfolds.
"All great social revolutions unfold over decades, not months or years," McFaul writes. "Ten years after the American war for Independence began, the United States still did not have a constitution. Today, political scientists have added little to our predictive powers during moments of rapid change."
Ultimately, McFaul acknowledges that "many chapters of the second Russian revolution have yet to unfold."
Michael McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University. He is also a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow and a member of the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Foundation.
McFaul has published numerous books and articles on political and economic reform in the former Soviet Union including Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics (Hoover Institution Press, 1997), Privatization, Conversion, and Enterprise Reform in Russia, coedited with Tova Perlmutter (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), and Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe, (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 1993).
The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs.
