This book got its start in Moscow during the ebullient spring of 1991. Still as fresh, hopeful and innocent as spring itself, political life had sprouted forth again in Russia, bringing to a close that seventy-year political ice-age, communism. In the face of that, it dawned on me and my colleagues – Vyacheslav Igrunov and Sergei Mitrokhin – that someone needed to write this story and that we might as well be the ones to attempt it. Ironically, however, the subject of our concern soon became the undoing of our collaboration as politics demanded more and more of the working lives of my Russian partners until autumn 1993 when, following their successful campaign for seats in the State Duma, it claimed them completely. Although the writing thus fell to me, they continued to participate in the project throughout: first, by composing segments for chapters 2, 4–6 and 8 that I have translated, reworked and blended into the text; and, second, by commenting on the draft chapters that I had produced, pointing out my errors, suggesting alternative perspectives on one or another question, sharing their knowledge and acumen with me. As such, the first-person plural pronoun has been used in this book to record that degree of collaboration that we managed to sustain.

Our study proceeds along two parallel lines. Along the first of these, we sketch Russia's political rebirth in broad strokes, offering an interpretation of that process that draws on structural, organizational and communicative perspectives to frame it in interactive terms. In our view, this topic can be neither exhausted nor explained by consulting the preferences, projects, calculations, actions and reactions of the individuals participating in it.