INTRODUCTION

The intention of this volume is to understand Russian politics in the light of what we know about “really existing democracies” but also to draw lessons for democratic theory from the particular and peculiar experience of Russia during the past twenty years. Neither task is easy. The volume is replete with controversies about the origins of the current Russian political system, its stability, and its future; about the theoretical principles that best elucidate the evolution of Russian politics; as well as about the norms that should be applied to evaluate the current Russian political regime. Clearly a fall of an authoritarian regime need not result in democracy, but it is far from obvious whether the current Russian regime is transitional or stable, whether it is best seen as a mixture of democratic and authoritarian elements or as some original form of “non-Western democracy,” whether it is a case of a “failed” transition to democracy or a stage of development toward one. In the end, one may question why Russia should be viewed from the perspective of democracy at all or at least whether looking at Russia through the prism of democracy provides an explanatory power or is a purely normative undertaking. But the normative appeal of democracy is sufficiently strong to alone warrant our perspective.

As we warned in the introduction, the volume resolves few issues. But we do hope to have sharpened the questions, to have learned which conclusions are driven by which assumptions, to have come to the limits beyond which facts no longer resolve disagreements, to have bared the role of political and normative commitments in shaping the diagnoses, the prognoses, and the evaluations. At least for the authors of this volume – and many of us had thought about democracy for years – the endeavor turned out to be surprisingly disturbing in baring the inadequacy of democratic theory to guide our understanding of the realities of Russian politics.