Michael A. McFaul - The results of the parliamentary vote on 7 December suggest that Russia has entered a new political era. For the first decade of post-communist politics in Russia, the central cleavage was between left and right, communist and anticommunist, or "reformers" and non-reformers. The central issue was the economy and policies to reform it. The vote tally from the election suggests that a third parameter -- nationalism -- has overtaken these earlier divides and debates. The long-term consequences could be terrifying.

Michael A. McFaul - The results of the parliamentary vote last Sunday suggest that Russia has entered new political era. For the first decade of post-communist politics in Russia, the central cleavage was between left and right, communist and anti-communist, or ''reformers'' and non-reformers.

Michael A. McFaul - On election night in Moscow fours years ago, Russia's liberals drank to celebrate their unexpected electoral victory in the 1999 parliamentary vote. Optimists predicted a resurgence of liberalism as economic prosperity continued to build a middle-class constituency for liberal ideas. That evening leaders of the liberal coalition, Union of Right Forces (SPS is the Russian acronym), even talked about a real run for the Kremlin by one of their own in 2008. The prospect that Anatoly Chubais, Russia's privatization czar turned CEO of Russia's electricity monopoly, might end up president did not sound fanciful. But last week, instead of toasting their momentum, members of the SPS drank to numb the bitterness of a resounding defeat. The xenophobic demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) doubled its share of the vote since the last Duma election four years ago, while a new nationalist coalition, Motherland (Rodina), came from nowhere to win 9 percent of the popular vote. The 50 or so seats previously held by liberals in Russia's parliament will now be occupied by these nationalists.

Michael A. McFaul - The debate about the future of Russian democracy in the United States has been ongoing for several years. However, the accumulation of democratic setbacks over the past three years, the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October and an electoral process assessed as being "not fair" by the OSCE in December have elevated the debate to the level of policymakers within the Bush administration.

For anyone looking for inspiration, heroes or a feel-good story this holiday season, Ukraine has it all. Read what Michael A. McFaul has to say about it.

As a visiting scholar at Moscow State University in the fall of 1990, Michael A. McFaul collaborated with three other academics then based at the university -- Steve Fish, Sergei Markov and Nikolai Zlobin -- to start a Russian-American discussion group on democratic politics. In various forms, our tusovka continued to meet for the next decade. Many of the participants in this discussion group are the central characters in Andrew Wilson's important new book, "Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World."

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the year 2006 was to mark Russia's return as a major power in international politics. Remember, for most of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union enjoyed superpower status because of its army, its nuclear weapons, and its communist ideology. For those living in the free world or under Soviet subjugation, these were all coercive assets. The Soviet Union held the world's attention out of fear, not respect. After a tumultuous decade of transition in the 1990s, which marginalized Russia as an international actor, Putin aspires to return Russia to its great-power status, not because of its army, ideology, or even nuclear weapons but because of its oil and gas.

As Ukrainians prepare to vote on Sunday for the first time since the Orange Revolution, few are remembering fondly their last trip to the ballot box. The revolution has disappointed; expectations have gone unmet.