WHEN RUSSIA DID DEMOCRACY From St Vladimir to Tsar Putin

MacINNES Kenneth

ISBN 10: 1398105449 / ISBN 13: 9781398105447

Published by Amberley, 2023. 9781398105447, 2023

About this Item

1st edn. 8vo. Original gilt lettered black cloth (Fine), dustwrapper (Fine, not price clipped). Pp. 296, illus with coloured plates (no inscriptions).

Seller Inventory # 172825

Bibliographic Details

• Title: WHEN RUSSIA DID DEMOCRACY From St Vladimir to Tsar Putin
• Publisher: Amberley, 2023. 9781398105447
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1398105449
• ISBN 13: 9781398105447
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern History

About this title

Synopsis

When Lenin and the Bolsheviks were shut down after only one session of the Constituent Assembly in the wake of the Russian Revolution, it was said to mark the end of Russia’s one-day experiment with democracy.

However, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a true period of democracy was ushered in – and the result was a strange world that is scarcely believable when viewed from the era of Putin.

Political contests were fought between a bewildering array of different parties representing the entire spectrum of beliefs – liberals, communists, nationalists, environmentalists, fascists, social democrats, conservatives, technocrats, separatists, monarchists, women’s parties. Sometimes even combinations of ideologies, like ‘national bolshevism’.

It was an anarchic time of passionate campaigns and contested elections, political assassinations and blackmail, attempts by parliament to impeach the president and by the president to literally bomb parliament. But most of the political fighting in the 1990s was done via the ballot box or on television.

A fascinated witness of Russian politics, Kenneth MacInnes lived in the country through this unique and exciting era. This book travels through the ten-year period where Russia did democracy, and looks at the chances of it ever happening again.

About the Author

Kenneth MacInnes has edited or translated more than 350 books from Russian into English, and has translated several works of English literature into Russian – including the novels of George Orwell. He has read papers on Anglo-Russian history at the annual foreign language conference of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.