PART ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOVIET POLITICAL SYSTEM
Mary McCauley
"Introduction," from Soviet Politics, 1917-1991
Merle Fainsod
"Terror as a System of Power"
Seweryn Bialer
"Soviet Stability and its Sources"
PART TWO: THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
Katherine Verdery
"What Was Socialism and Why Did it Fail?"
Joel M. Ostrow
"Glasnost Gutted the Party, Democratization Destroyed the State"
Alexander Dallin
"Causes of the Collapse of the USSR"
PART THREE: CORE TASKS FOR POSTCOMMUNIST RUSSIA
Joel M. Ostrow, Georgiy A. Starov, and Irina M. Khakamada
"Crucial Junctures and the Demise of Democracy in Russia"
Zvi Gitleman
"The Democratization of Russia in Comparative Perspective"
David Foglesong and Gordon Hahn
"Ten Myths About Russia: Understanding and Dealing with Russia’s Complexity and Ambiguity"
PART FOUR: THE ECONOMY: MARKET CAPITALISM OR INSTITUTIONALIZED CORRUPTION?
Andrei Shliefer and Daniel Triesman
"A Normal Country: Russia after Communism"
Lilia Shevtsova
"The Triumph of Bureaucratic Capitalism"
Steven Handleman
Excerpts from "Comrade Criminal" and "The Criminal State"
PART FIVE: THE EXECUTIVE AND THE LEGISLATURE
Lilia Shevtsova
"Liberal Technocrats as an Adornment of the State"
Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White
"Inside the Putin Court: A Research Note"
Paul Chaisty
"Majority Control and Executive Dominance: Parliament–President Relations in Putin's Russia"
PART SIX: POLITICAL PARTIES
Vladimir Gel’man
"Party Politics in Russia: From Competition to Hierarchy"
Vladimir Gel’man
"Political Opposition in Russia: A Dying Species?"
Stephen White
"Russia’s Client Party System"
M. Steven Fish
Selection from "Symptoms of the Failure of Democracy in Russia"
PART SEVEN: ELECTIONS
Joel M. Ostrow, Georgiy A. Starov, and Irina M. Khakamada
Excerpts from “Corrupting the Elections: Enter the Oligarchs” and “Abandoning Democracy: Anointing a Successor”
Misha Myagakov and Peter Ordeshook
"Russian Elections: An Oxymoron of Democracy"
M. Steven Fish
Selection from "Symptoms of the Failure of Democracy in Russia"
PART EIGHT: NATIONALISM AND CHECHNYA
Rafael Khachaturian
"The Spectre of Russian Nationalism"
Anna Politkovskaya
"Chechnya: A Dirty War 1999-2002"
Marlene Laurelle
"Conclusion: Nationalism as Political Posture"
PART NINE: THE MEDIA
Joel M. Ostrow, Georgiy A. Starov, and Irina M. Khakamada
"Dictatorship Becomes the Only Game in Town"
M. Steven Fish
Selections from "Symptoms of the Failure of Democracy in Russia"
Masha Lipman
"Constrained or Irrelevant: The Media in Putin’s Russia"
Oleg Panfilov
"Russia: Why Do Journalists Die?"
Oleg Panfilov
"Rebirth of Russian Nationalism: State Control of the Mass Media Is the Principal Cause Of the Growth of Xenophobia in Russia"
David Satter
"Journalism of Intimidation"
Dmitriy Sidorov
"All the News the Kremlin Thinks is Fit to Print"