Leon Aron

Leon Aron is resident scholar and director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. His books include Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (2000) and Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideas and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987–1991 (2012).

October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4

The Kremlin Emboldened: Putinism After Crimea

Read the full essay here. “The pursuit of national glory,” which M. Steven Fish counts among the features of Vladimir Putin’s “populism,” is emerging as central to the regime’s legitimation. Unlike previous instances of patriotic mobilization (around the Second Chechen War and the 2008 Georgia war), the current one appears to have evolved into a…

April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2

Reading Russia: The Merger of Power and Property

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 cohort whose members often have a background in the secret police. Instead of seeking to base its legitimacy on broad-based, transpersonal institutions with character and…

Free

April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2

Another Russia? After the Leviathan

There is a future for democracy in Russia, but it may have to wait until the people begin to feel the problems created by the current system.