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Article: Russia's "Transition": Is Democracy Delayed Democracy Denied?
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- September 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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According to an old Soviet joke popular in the 1980s, central planning represented the longest route from capitalism to capitalism. A more recent variant making the rounds in Moscow after the great financial collapse of 1998 suggested that capitalism may have been the longest route from central planning to central planning.
Scholars of the democratic "transition" in Russian and the former Soviet republics have begun to adopt a similarly fatalistic tone. There is concern that the Russian transition may have become "stuck," that democracy remains "unconsolidated," or that the transition may never have happened in Russia in the first place. With an impenetrable veil ...