Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences
Russia Today (Volume 76, Number 1, Spring 2009)


http://www.newschool.edu/centers/socres/vol76/issue761.html

Editor's Introduction

In keeping with our policy to publish recurring issues on places in the world undergoing or recently having undergone marked changes (see our issues on China [Volume 73:1, Spring 2006] and South Africa [Volume 72:3, Fall 2005]), this issue looks at current aspects of the Russian state and society during a period of many deep, systemic changes.

Our readers should be aware that we began putting this issue together well before the Russian election that took place on March 2, 2008, in the hope of publishing an assessment by knowledgeable specialists of the consequences of that election. Due to various unforeseen editorial decisions and vicissitudes, the issue is appearing one year after that election and during an economic crisis that is much worse than when these articles were written. Even so, some of our authors do discuss some the problems created by falling oil prices, which began many months ago and severely impacted the Russian economy that prospered only as long as those prices remained high.

It is, as our readers surely know, impossible for a quarterly to be up to date when it tackles current events. There is simply too much delay time between inviting authors to write and the actual publication of their papers. Nevertheless, we will continue to examine these kinds of issues in the belief that reflective pieces on quickly changing global matters can increase our understanding of what is going on and what is likely to happen.

I think that is true of the current issue. While the economic crisis dominates the headlines, the issue itself traces the trajectories of a host of other concerns, social and political, in the years since the transition from the Yeltsin era to the Putin and then Medvedev era. It highlights especially the stamp Putin has put on contemporary Russia, and it is these discussions that can help us better understand the new Russia that will be affected by this crisis.

-Arien Mack

Russia Today, Volume 76, Number 1, Spring 2009

Table of Contents

Anders Åslund  
Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed in Russia

Timothy Frye, Andrei Yakovlev and Yevgeny Yasin
The "Other" Russian Economy: How Everyday Firms View the Rules the Game in Russia

Marshall Goldman       
Russia: A Petrostate in a Time of Worldwide Economic Recession and Political Turmoil

Sergei Alex Oushakine  
"Stop the Invasion!": Money, Patriotism, and Conspiracy in Russia

Fyodor Lukyanov        
Putin's Russia: The Quest for a New Place

Dale R. Herspring      
Vladimir Putin: His Continuing Legacy

Jessica Allina-Pisano  
Property: What Is It Good For?

Andrei Kortunov        
Russian Higher Education

Tomila Lankina 
Regional Developments in Russia: Territorial Fragmentation in a Consolidating Authoritarian State

Alena Ledeneva 
From Russia with Blat: Can Informal Networks Help Modernize Russia?

Nikolay Mitrokhin      
The Russian Orthodox Church in Contemporary Russia: Structural Problems and Contradictory Relations with the Government, 2000-2008

Alexei V. Malashenko   
Islam in Russia

Dina Khapaeva  
Historical Memory in Post-Soviet Gothic Society