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Russia Readings - Coggle Diagram

- - - - USSR was also an 'empire-state' if Russian-faced, just a modern Russian empire? What Russian attempts to meddle in Georgia and take back Ukraine represents?
        
        'to the other republics (and to a certain extent to the Russians as well), Soviet power was always synonymous with Russian power'
- - - - 'positive attitudes toward at least some aspects of life in the Soviet Union
      - 'most people wanted to retain state control of heavy industry, but not of light industry and agriculture'
      - 'the political ideal of the Soviet citizen was 'a paternalistic state with extremely wide powers which it would vigorously exercise to control the nation's destiny, but which yet served the intersts of the citizen benignly, which respected his personal dignity and left him with a certain amount of freedom of desire and a feeling of freedom from arbitrary interference and punishment'
    - - 'material wealth, not civil liberty, was seen by the majority of the population as the most important task fr the leadership'
        
        'liberalization, arguably the major achievement of Gorbachev's leaderhsip, was viewed by the majority not as an aim in itself, but as a means to achieve the more important goal of material prosperity'
        
        Gorbachev, once he let people speak, unable to meet their desires or comprehend so 'the public understood the results of his policy to be growing anarchy and a lack of order'
  - - - 1992, prices x25, 1993 20 mil (15% unemployed, real disposable income less than half of 1991, 1998 saw another economic crisis and 'since 'democrats were in power they were to blame for everything'
        
        'by 1991, 50 percent of the people believed that a multi-party system had brought 'more harm than good', and 'party politics' had become the most unpopular feature in the new society'
      - 'since Yeltsin continued to use democratic rhetoric, the public began to disapprove of everythign associated with democray and pro-Western liberalism'
  - - - matched 'growing passivity of Russian voters'
    - - elite politics= 'the interests of the mdoern Russian rulign elite were strongly dependent on normal relations with Western Europe' (world culture?)
      - gneral view, in 980s people thought pro-market reforms would increase standard of living, when failed to do this in 1990 support fell
- - - - 'liberal, constitutional, and civic commitments', 'extremely cosmopolitan'
      - 'effective democracy is seen as something that is intrinsically desirable, but not in prospect'
      - Russian political leadership that has failed, not democracy
      - 'any defense of existing democratic accomplishments in Russia would seem to fall to the Chastened democracy discourse', the other discourses not interest in such a defense
    - - 'clearly regrets the passing of the Soviet Union' but is 'quite indifferent when it comes to democracy versus communism'
      - 'not anti-democratic, but it is anti-liberal in its hostility to privatization, market reforms, and excessive freedom on the one hand, and its stress on the need for state-controlled social discipline on the other'
      - COmmunist Party of the Russian Federation 'has rejected aspects of the Soviet past while highlighting others for which it believes there remains nostalgia wtihin the electorate', also 'pay lip service to democracy'
      - pervaded by 'sense of loss, and search for scapegoats'
    - - 'skeptical discourse' that dissaproves of Soviet Union and post-communist regime
      - 'first priority is to make Russia rich
      - 'party home' in Unity
      - 'the clarification of what Putin stood for by the middle of 2000 would mostly be music to factor C's ears'
- - - - still, 'both the constitutional powers of the office and the effect of centuries of bureaucratic authoritarianism in Russia have made the presidency the heir to the positions of tsar and general secretary'
    - - fired PMs Chernomyrdin, Kirienki, Primakov & Stepashin in < 18 months
  - - - directing role but not at the expense of political & economic freedom, 'what is needed instead is a Russian state which provides security and stability for the institutions of civil society and individual freedom, which in turn counterbalance and monitor the state'
- - - - but difficult to find coherence and 'most people entrenched themselves in the political attitudes that had been forming gradually over hte previous decades', three tendencies: 'Western liberal-democrat, Russianist imperial, and labor-based economic'