A review of Hidden Nations: The People Challenge the Soviet Union, by Nadia Diuk and Adrian Karatnycky.
About the Author
Martha Brill Olcott, professor of political science at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, is currently a resident scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. She is the author of The Kazakhs (1987) and the editor of Religion and Tradition in Islamic Central Asia (forthcoming).
There is no consensus about the nature of the political system in Moscow today. Yet how one understands the motivations propelling Russian policy abroad depends on how one understands its…
Read the full essay here. The regime in Moscow mixes key features of a capitalist economy with a political system wherein power is monopolized by a close-knit professional and age…