How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development

As Russia tries to establish the foundations of a stable and productive market-based economic system, it must determine the importance of the state to its prospects. What kind of political order corresponds to the challenges that Russia faces in the post-Soviet period? This analysis argues that geography matters a great deal and the state remains central in compensating for the austere implications of economic geography for Russia's economic prospects under market circumstances.

Allen C. Lynch is the Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies and Hugh S. and Winifred B. Cumming Memorial Professor of International Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is the author of numerous books, including The Soviet Study of International Relations (Cambridge, 1987), which was the winner of the 1988 Marshall D. Shulman Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and The Cold War is Over-Again (1992). He is also the author of numerous articles on Russian and Slavic studies.