Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System
Dmitrii Furman
Mar 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Rich Miller
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6 hr 9 min
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About this audiobook
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states. Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman's narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia's political landscape, culminating in Putin's third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the "form" and "content" of imitation democracy, "the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power."
About the author
Dmitrii Furman's first book, Religion and Social Conflicts in the USA, was published in the USSR in 1981. In later years he became a leading scholar of post-Soviet political development, and theorist of "imitation democracy," publishing books on a number of former Soviet republics before his death in 2011.
Rich Miller has performed onstage in everything from Shakespeare to Damn Yankees to August: Osage County. He also starred in the indie feature Ocatilla Flat.
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