Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin

400 Pages·2001·7.21 MB·English

by  Michael McFaul

Russia's Unfinished Revolution

Russia's Unfinished
Revolution
Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin
MICHAEL McFAUL
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2001 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher. For
information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2001 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2002
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McFaul, Michael, b. 1963
Russia's unfinished revolution : political change from
Gorbachev to Putin / Michael Anthony McFaul.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-3900-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-8814-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Russia (Federation)-Politics and government-
1991-. 2. Soviet Union-Politics and government-
1985-1991. 3. Democracy-Russia (Federation)
4. Democracy-Soviet Union. I. Title.
DK510·763 .M384 2001
320.947-dc21 2001001667
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Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
For my parents,
Kip and Helen McFaul

Contents
Preface IX
Acknowledgments xiii
1. The Revolutionary Transition from
Communism to Democracy: A Model 1
PART 1. THE GORBACHEV ERA, 1985-1991
2. Gorbachev's Design for Reforming Soviet Political Institutions 33
3· The End of the Soviet Union 61
PART 2. THE FIRST RUSSIAN REpUBLIC, 1991-1993
4· Institutional Design in the First Russian Republic 121
5· The Failure of the First Russian Republic 161
PART 3. THE EMERGENCE OF THE
SECOND RUSSIAN REpUBLIC, 1993-1996
6. Designing the Political Institutions of the Second Republic 207
7· Transitional Constitutionalism 228
8. Transitional Electoralism 265
vii
CONTENTS
PART IV. THE FUTURE OF RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY
g. The Quality of Russian Democracy
10. The Stability of Partial Democracy
Index 373
vm
Preface
In the spring of 1988, I traveled to Moscow to do some final interviews
for my dissertation on revolutions in southern Africa. Because I was espe­
cially concerned with international influences on revolutionary processes,
I wanted to meet Soviet scholars working on the same subject. My visit to
the Institute of Mrican Studies that spring was mostly a bust. KGB agents
disguised as senior researchers were not that revealing about their activi­
ties in fomenting revolution in Angola, Zimbabwe, or South Africa. They
also were wary of my motives, believing of course that I worked for the same
kind of agency that they did. One real scholar at the Institute, Tanya
Krasnopevtsova, took my research interests seriously. Away from the op­
pressive confines of the Institute and in the safer space provided by a park
bench at Patriarch's Pond, Tanya explained to me what the Soviet Union
was really up to in southern Africa. When she finally figured out that my
dissertation was about revolutions, she scoffed at my case selection. ''Why
study Angola when a revolution is under way right here in the largest coun­
try in the world?"
My chance encounter with Tanya Krasnopevtsova that spring had huge
consequences for the path that my research and life interests would take.
She introduced me to two scruffy, crazed, romantic revolutionaries, Yuri
Skubko and Viktor Kuzin. At the time, both were busy forming the first
noncommunist party in the Soviet Union, the Democratic Union. The prin­
ciples guiding their formation of this party included elimination of the cult
of Lenin and creation of a multiparty democracy-ideas radical if not down­
right naive for the times. At the time, I did not believe that these Demo­
cratic Union activists had any chance for success, but I was intrigued by
ix