Twenty Years of Postcommunism: What’s the Matter with Russia?

Issue Date January 2010
Volume 21
Issue 1
Page Numbers 152-159
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The author deliberates on the different paradigms of transformation in the Central and East European states and Russia, and attempts to offer an answer to the questions: What stopped Russia from breaking free of its past civilizational logic? What was the balance between inevitability and lost historical opportunity in Russia’s case? Is there hope for a future transformation in Russia? The author analyses the confluence of several elements that helped to set Russia’s course: the influence of history; the challenges of the transformation process itself; the importance of leadership; and the role of the West.

About the Author

Lilia Shevtsova is the author of Interregnum: Russia Between Past and Future (2014) and Putin’s Russia (2010). 

View all work by Lilia Shevtsova