Reading the collected works of Alexander Dallin bears little distinction from reviewing the entire history of the Soviet Union. Few authors have written so widely and crossed so many disciplinary boundaries. Categories such as "historian" versus "political scientist" or expert on "domestic" versus "foreign" policy offer little analytic power in describing Alexander Dallin and his work. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, however, the perspective from which we approach this body of work has suddenly changed. Writing on the eve of the disintegration of the USSR, Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus wrote in their introduction to The Soviet System in Crisis that "The changes in Soviet politics and foreign policy precipitated by Gorbachev's leadership challenged the prevailing academic paradigms and the conventional wisdom regarding the Soviet system."

How will civil-military relations affect efforts to consolidate new democracies in developing and postcommunist countries? How should democratic governments go about establishing civilian control of the armed forces? This volume brings together ten distinguished authorities from around the world to examine these questions as they relate to Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.

No matter the outcome of Boris Yeltsin's coming heart surgery, uncertainty about his ability to serve out his second term has jump-started planning and plotting to succeed him. On Saturday, his security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, called for the President to step down until he has recovered.

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Reprinted as "Pre-election Maneuvers for a Yeltsin Succession," in International Herald Tribune, October 2, 1996; and "What Crisis?" in Hoover Digest, No. 1 (1997), pp.78-80.

The first Russian privatization program represented the largest and fastest property reform ever undertaken in the modern world. This article, however, is not concerned with the quantity and speed of Russia's privatization program, but rather with the kind of privatization that occurred in the first round. Drawing on theories of path dependency, this article argues that the institutional legacy regarding property rights in the Soviet era influenced the course of privatization in post-Soviet Russia. Using a principal-agent model to illuminate the distribution of property rights in the Soviet era, this article first delineates the bundle of property rights that enterprise directors assumed during the Soviet period. The article then traces how these directors sought to protect their property rights during the Russian government's privatization program. To test this explanation, the article then analyses some empirical data from the first round of privatization, first in a discussion of the quantitative results of Russia's first privatization program, and second in a qualitative comparison of four case studies of privatization.

Most observers of Russia's historic presidential election on July 3 believed that Boris Yeltsin and his colleagues had made a dramatic bid for reelection and won. But Time magazine's ensuing cover story, "Yanks to the Rescue," by chief political correspondent Michael Kramer, and the ABC news Nightline feature "Secret Weapon," aired July 8, had a different take. They chose to downplay the greatest political event of the decade -- the triumph of democrats and democracy in the first direct election of a head of state in Russia in a thousand years -- and featured instead three American consultants who allegedly won the race for Boris Yeltsin. As one of these men boasted on Nightline, "We have brought democracy to the evil empire and the world will be forever changed because of it." This is ludicrous.

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After two rounds of voting, as you know, Boris Yeltsin was reelected President of Russia. In the first round, he surpassed his closest challenger, the Communist Party chairman Zyuganov by only 3 percentage points. However, in the second round, Yeltsin trounced Zyuganov by an impressive 13 percentage points. Voter turn-out in each round was about 67 percent. The high turn-out testifies to the electorates's continuing involvement in the political process despite many disappointments and economic hardships, and ominous predictions of a low turn-out.

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Michael McFaul comments that events during Russia's July 1996 runoff election have highlighted the flaws in the new democracy there.

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The last year of Russian politics presented a great challenge for analysts both in Russia and the West. Polarized for years over the future of Boris Yeltsin and Russian democracy, both optimists and pessimists faced a critical test of their assumptions, models and ability to predict events. With the main event -- the presidential election -- now over, the optimists can claim victory.

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Who are Alexander Lebed's supporters? How these voters act in the second round is one of the two critical factors that will determine whether Boris Yeltsin or Gennady Zyuganov is Russia's next president.

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Reprinted in Russian as "Komu otadadut golosa storoniki Lebedya?" Kapital, June 26-July 2, 1996, p. 12.

Michael McFaul says Russian President Boris Yeltsin's decisions regarding the hostage crises in Chechnya and changes in his government reflect his new strategy as he runs for a second term as president, and the success of Yeltsin's strategy will depend upon how the war in Chechnya unfolds.

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