Cover Osteuropa 1/2010

In Osteuropa 1/2010

Dead End
Authoritarian Modernisation in Russia

Vladimir Gel’man


Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

Russia has to modernise. There is a widespread assumption that this can happen only by way of an authoritarian modernisation. Only the bureaucracy, the army, and the ruling party come into question as the supporters of such a course of modernisation. But in Russia, none of these institutions is interested in modernisation, to say nothing of being in a position to implement it. The Putin regime has manoeuvred Russia into a dead end. Only insight into the necessity of a simultaneous reform of the political system, the state structure, and the economy offers Russia the chance of embarking on the path of modernisation.

(Osteuropa 1/2010, pp. 3–14)