Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System

by Dmitrii Furman, Keith Gessen (Foreword by), Tony Wood (Afterword)

Overview

Examines the history and functioning of Russia's post-Soviet political system–an “imitation democracy”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of “imitation democracy,” marked by “a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule.” How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future?

These questions animate Dmitrii Furman’s Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, and a thorough knowledge of both official and unofficial histories, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states.

Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman’s narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia’s political landscape, culminating in Putin’s third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the “form” and “content” of imitation democracy, “the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788733533
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	11/22/2022
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.77(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Dmitri Furman’s first book, Religion and Social Conflicts in the USA, was published in the USSR in 1981. In later years he became a leading scholar of post-Soviet political development, and theorist of “imitation democracy,” publishing books on a number of former Soviet republics before his death in 2011.

Table of Contents

Foreword Keith Gessen vii

Introduction xv

1 The Fall of the Soviet State and the Emergence of New Political Systems 1

1.1 The Path of Transformation 5

1.2 The Unwalkable Path to Democracy 10

1.3 For Russia, a Means of Direct Transition to Democracy in 1991 'Could Not Be Found' 14

1.4 The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Democratic Movement 23

1.5 One Liquidation for All, with Different Consequences for Each 41

2 The Development of Russia's Political System 45

2.1 Conflict with the Parliament and Ratification of the Constitution 46

2.2 The First Post-Soviet Presidential Elections 66

2.3 The Succession Crisis 76

2.4 Suppressing Separatism and Subordinating Regional Power 88

2.5 The Submission of the 'Oligarchs' and the Media 92

2.6 The Creation of United Russia, the Movement toward a Quasi-One-Party System, and the Establishment of Control over Parliament 98

2.7 Politics as a Series of 'Special Operations' and the Increasingly Strong Role of the Special Services 101

2.8 Ideological Quests 104

2.9 Russia 'Rises from Its Knees' and Faces Increasing Confrontations with the West 108

3 'The Golden Age': A Developed System 118

3.1 Putin's Second Term 120

3.2 Achieving Power's Greatest Possible Control over Society and the 'Limits of the System's Growth' 126

3.3 What Could Have Frightened the President? 130

4 The Growth of Contradictions and the Movement toward a Crisis of the Political System 134

4.1 Atrophy of Feedback Mechanisms 137

4.2 Social Mobility 'in the Bureaucratic Style' 139

4.3 The Only Ideology Is Guaranteeing Loyalty 143

4.4 The Crisis Is Sure to Come as a Surprise 146

5 In Place of a Conclusion: Possible Outcomes of the Coming Crisis 151

5.1 The First Alternative: A Successful Transition to Democracy 152

5.2 The Second Alternative: A Return to No-Alternative Power and the Start of a New Cycle 156

Afterword Tony Wood 159

Index 171

Editorial Reviews

Russia is an imitation culture. Throughout the country’s history it has formulated its existence using European formulas. But then unable to compete on the well-established democratic terms Russia has repeatedly positioned itself as a special civilization, in essence, what the West is not. Dmitry Furman’s book discusses one of the most important moments in russian history—transition from communism to democracy, as it were. At the time it seemed that Russia’s cycle of imitation of the West and then the resentment that it cannot or doesn’t not want to follow the rules, could finally be broken. Despite all the democratic promises it was not. Furman brilliantly and meticulously explains as why Russia constantly falls into an autocratic trap of its own making. His is a sober analysis not only of Russia’s past but also grim prospects for democracy in its future.”
—Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs, The New School, New York

From the Publisher