Developments in Russian Politics 6 by Stephen White , Zvi Gitelman , Richard Sakwa (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 183 were critical weapons in the armoury of Russia's conservatives, and the state placed great stress on its role as protector of its people. Pipes's argument does not pay adequate attention to the dynamism of the Russian autocracy and to the ways in which itwas changing, especially after 1850. He does recognize that the Great Reforms introduced a new element into the relationship between state and society, but does not see that the reforms helped to bring a modern civil society inRussia intobeing in the second half of thenineteenth century. Pipes's view of Russian conservatism is narrow in conception and he needs to take a more nuanced approach to the ideologies that buttressed the Russian state.Much recent research in both Russia and the West has offered detailed insights intoRussian statehood and has provided us with a deeper understanding of the ideas thatmotivated Russian monarchs and their close advisers. Pipes's disappointing book takes an intensely traditional approach to the intellectual history of the Russian state; a history of autocracy and its proponents remains to be written. School of History Peter Waldron Universityof East Anglia White, Stephen; Gitelman, Zvi and Sakwa, Richard (eds). Developments in Russian Politics 6. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2005. xviii + 284 pp. Notes. Tables. Maps. Figures. Guide to further reading. Bibliography. Index. ?18.99 (paperback). 'Transition' is now a complex term, but it once denoted a set of transforma tions involving a fairly straight-forward idea of, at least, its startingand finish ingpoints. Anyone interested in understanding the deep changes experienced (and also endured) by Russians over the lastfifteenyears will almost certainly be familiar with the present series.Developments inRussian Politics 6 refines and develops previous surveys, updating them to cover the main events since 2001. A veteran editorial effort, the Developments series too has undergone an interest ing evolution since 1990, reflectingboth the fluidpolitical realities itexamines, and the limitsof the transition paradigm. The makeup of the present edition has once more adapted to the times. The core work remains focused on the Russian presidency, the parliament, the electoral and party systems, the rule of law, foreign policy, regionalism and the federal structure, and social and economic policy. The previous version carried a section on 'current developments', including the chapters on crime, health care, media and a tentative reconstruction of Russian national identityby Vera Tolz. The new edition has merged the issues of crime and health into an interesting and comprehensive new chapter on 'Social Policy in Post-Soviet Russia' by Judy Twigg (chapter 12), has kept an illuminating and up-to-date section on 'Media and Political Communication' by Sarah Oates (chapter 7), and has dropped Tolz's contribution in favour of a new essay by Alfred B. Evans Jr. which explores the fate of civil society (chapter 6). If there is a common thread running through all the contributions it is the 184 SEER, 86, I, 2008 sense that Putin's counterterrorist measures (involving, for one, a palpable retreat on civil liberties)might yet be the harbinger of a new phase inRussian politics, the threshold onto a new kind of authoritarian, if still electoral, regime. The new chapter on foreign policy, written byMargot Light, is one of this edition's foremost improvements (chapter 13).As Alex Pravda before her, Light breaks Russian foreign policy into the twin discussions ofMoscow's approach to its near and far abroad, but manages to present a far more systematic picture of her topic by extending on several of Pravda's points. She agrees that, throughout the 1990s, Russian foreign policy was often contradictory and unstable, but provides a brief discussion on those institu tional factors which were behind it. For Light, the responsibilities of the ministry of foreign affairs and presidency were never really distinguished until the arrival of Primakov, some two years after the adoption of theConstitution in 1993. Even then, as she explains, these lineswere still susceptible of being suddenly blurred by the often explosive and erratic political personality of El'tsin. Putin's arrival has changed all this,giving theKremlin's international policy a more pragmatic and realist spirit, and Russia's refusal to join the US/UK coalition...