Yegor Gaidar, the first post-Soviet prime minister of Russia and one of the principal architects of its historic transformation to a market economy, here presents his lively account of governing in the tumultuous early 1990s. Though still in his forties, Gaidar has already played a pivotal role in contemporary Russian political history, championing the cause of dramatic economic reform, aggressive privatization of state enterprises, and painful fiscal discipline in the face of widespread popular resistance.

The most surprising outcome of Russia's recent financial meltdown has been the demonstration of democracy's resilience, not its weakness. Most major political actors are preparing for the upcoming elections, not planning to seize power on their own.

In December 1993, a new political order began in Russia. Often called the Second Russian Republic, this political order is ruled by two central, if somewhat contradictory, principles. First, the Russian political system was to be dominated by one central decision-maker, the president. Having defeated his enemies in a violent confrontation in October 1993, Boris Yeltsin and his assistants drafted a constitution that served his immediate interests. The new basic law accorded the president's office inordinate political power and subordinated the other branches of the national government to lesser roles. In addition, the 1993 constitution specified that direct elections would be the only legitimate mechanism for assuming national political office. Even the president would be subjected to the uncertainties of the electoral process. In vesting the office of the presidency with greater powers, the new constitution also made the office directly accountable to the people.

What are Russian foreign policy objectives? It depends on whom you ask.

In making assessments of Russia's behavior in the world, it is absolutely

critical that we recognize that Russia today is not a totalitarian state ruled by a

Communist Party with a single and clearly articulated foreign policy of expanding

world socialism and destroying world capitalism and democracy. That state

disappeared in 1991. Rather, Russia is a democratizing state - a weakly institutionalized

democracy with several deficiencies, but a democratizing state

nonetheless. Russia's foreign policy, in turn, is a product of domestic politics in

a pluralistic system.

On 17 August 1998, the Russian government took emergency measures to avert an economic meltdown, but these did little to halt the crisis. A week later, the ruble had lost two-thirds of its value vis-'a-vis the dollar. In one day, the two major economic achievements of the Boris Yeltsin era--control of inflation and a stable, transferable currency--were wiped out. The stock market all but disappeared, the ruble continued to fall, banks closed, prices soared, and stores emptied as people started to stockpile durable goods like cigarettes, sugar, and flour. Responding desperately to a desperate situation, Yeltsin fired Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko and his government and eventually nominated Yevgeny Primakov to head a coalition government of centrists, communists, liberals, and even one member from Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party. Several months after taking power, however, this new government had done little to devise a strategy for halting Russia's economic woes.

Michael McFaul explains why Russia's change from communist rule has been so protracted and conflictual in comparison with other democratic transitions. He focuses on the strategic interaction of individual actors, rather than cultural or historical factors, to build an explanation for Russia's troubled transition.

During transitional moments, new leaders must design political institutions. Some of these designs succeed in establishing lasting rules of the game. Others do not. This paper analyzes those factors which either facilitate or undermine institutional persistence during transitions, focusing particularly on the role that uncertainty and path dependency play in these processes. The empirical section of the paper examines three cases of institutional design in the Soviet/Russian transition--the creation of the Russian presidency, the emergence of electoral law for Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, and the evolution of institutional design regarding the formation of Russia's upper house, the Federal Council. This comparison shows why the first two cases of institutional design created lasting institutions--even though these new rules did not reflect precisely the interests of their creators--while the third case of institutional design did not.

The wave of ethnic conflict that has recently swept across parts of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa has led many political observers to fear that these conflicts are contagious. Initial outbreaks in such places as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda, if not contained, appear capable of setting off epidemics of catastrophic proportions. In this volume, David Lake and Donald Rothchild have organized an ambitious, sophisticated exploration of both the origins and spread of ethnic conflict, one that will be useful to policymakers and theorists alike.

The editors and contributors argue that ethnic conflict is not caused directly by intergroup differences or centuries-old feuds and that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not simply uncork ethnic passions long suppressed. They look instead at how anxieties over security, competition for resources, breakdown in communication with the government, and the inability to make enduring commitments lead ethnic groups into conflict, and they consider the strategic interactions that underlie ethnic conflict and its effective management.

In December 1993, for the first time since the formation of Russia's anti-communist movement in the late 1980s, advocates of radical economic and political reform -- represented in this election by the electoral bloc Russia's Choice -- were rejected by Russia voters. The results shocked Russia's radical reformers. Although public opinion polls suggested that Russia's Choice might capture as high as 40 percent of the popular vote, this proreform and pro-Yeltsin electoral bloc won only 15.5 percent, well behind the 23 percent garnered by Vladimir Zhirinovskii's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia ( LDPR) and not much higher than the 12 percent won by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). This dismal showing was especially surprising considering that President Boris Yeltsin--the leader and symbol of Russia's radical reform movement--had just won majority approval ratings for both his performance as president and his economic reform plan in a nationwide referendum held in April 1993, just eight months before the December parliamentary elections.

"For the first time in several years, politicians across the spectrum-liberals, communists, and nationalists alike-have begun to speak about the specter of Russian fascism should the current economic and political crises continue. Others, including even President Yeltsin, have warned of coup plots aimed at toppling Russia's fragile democracy. What went wrong, so quickly?"

Yeltsin's decisions or non-decisions regarding the construction of a new Russian polity and a market economy after the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union greatly influenced the reorganization of societal interest groups. The transition to a market economy based on private property stimulated the emergence of a whole new set of economic interests. In parallel, the economic hardship and disorientation that followed from reform initiatives combined to demobilize mass-based political groups. The power and organization of a particular kind of 'economic society' grew at the same time that the influence and privilege of 'political society' and 'civil society' were on the wane.