PONARS Eurasia 28 - PONARS Eurasia

Rights and Restraints in Russia’s Criminal Justice System

One of the hardest tasks for the newly democratizing states in Central and Eastern Europe has been the establishment of fair and effective systems of criminal justice. During the Communist era, the…

Does Russia Need to Strengthen the Ruble? Accumulation of Foreign Exchange Reserves and Economic

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as some academic economists, suggest that Russia should run down its foreign exchange reserves (FER) and appreciate (strengthen) the ruble. These reserves grew quickly after…

Postwar Iraq: Policy Options for Russia

As foreseen by many observers, the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces on April 9, 2003, was just the beginning, not the end of the story. In postwar Iraq, the United…

The View of Russian Electoral Reforms from Russia’s Ethnic Republics

President Putin’s proposal to eliminate gubernatorial elections throughout Russia caught the leaders of Russia’s ethnic republics by surprise. Although it was widely known that such ideas had been circulating in the…

Waiting for a Democratic Left: A Dangerous Gap in Russia’s Political Spectrum

A decade ago, the politically entrepreneurial vanguard of Moscow's ruling elite–the so-called reformers–came to power under a slogan that was attractive by virture of its simplicity: transforming Russia into a…

The Selective Use of State Capacity in Russia’s Economy: Property Disputes and Enterprise Takeovers After 2000

Throughout the 1990s, the role of the Russian state in governing the private economy was negligible. Private organizations of various kinds, such as organized criminal groups, private security agencies, and…

The Duma Districts: Key to Putin’s Power

When politicians hit the campaign trail and Russians prepare to vote for a new parliament (the Duma), Western attention is invariably drawn to the familiar and colorful competition among parties seeking…

The Yukos Affair: Terminating the Implicit Contract

On July 2, 2003, Russian law enforcement arrested billionaire Platon Lebedev, chairman of the Board of Directors of MENATEP, the financial center of the oil giant YUKOS. A few days earlier the…

Putin’s State Building Project: Issues for the Second Term

Russian president Vladimir Putin made state building the central priority of his first term. For example, in his first State of the Union address in July 2000 Putin stated that meeting the…

Putin’s Anti-Federal Reform 2: Back to the USSR

The second phase of federal reforms, announced by the Kremlin in September 2004 fit into the general logic of reform under President Vladimir Putin. After a series of criminal investigations launched against…

What Does Winning Mean in 2003?: A Candidate Centered Analysis of Upcoming Parliamentary Elections

In 1993, 1995, and 1999, analysts and politicians in both Russia and the United States made bold predictions about the outcomes of each national parliamentary election. Their predictions, based largely on the…

The End of ‘Primitive Capitalist Accumulation’?: The New Bankruptcy Law and the Political Assertiveness of Russian Big Business

One of the important long-term trends in Russian business since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been concentration, as a small number of business groups (the heads of which…

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