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PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
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RECOMMENDED
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RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
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  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Twenty-Five Years after the USSR: What’s Gone Wrong?

  • July 13, 2016
  • Henry Hale

(Journal of Democracy) After a quarter-century, the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union looks like a de-democratizing event. Leading up to that fateful year, Mikhail Gorbachev had been one of the world’s great democratizers. In just six years after rising to the top post in one of history’s most repressive regimes, he had almost completely freed the media, launched competitive elections, and ended the Communist Party’s political monopoly. But this trend stopped in its tracks and even went into reverse when the Soviet Union broke apart into fifteen newly independent states in late 1991. In fact, if we take Freedom House measures and leave aside the three Baltic states, which were generally not recognized as being part of the USSR and soon joined the EU, there has not been a single year when the post-Soviet space on average has enjoyed the level of “political rights” (to use Freedom House’s term) that was achieved under Gorbachev. What accounts for this depressing reality? […]

Read More (PDF) © Journal of Democracy, v. 27, no. 3, July 2016, pp. 24-35

Henry Hale
Website | + posts
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs; Co-director, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES); Co-director, PONARS Eurasia

Affiliation

Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University

Links

The George Washington University (Bio)

Expertise

Political Regimes, Ethnic Politics, Federalism, Democratization, Political Parties, Politics of Post-Soviet Countries
  • Henry Hale
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/henry-hale/
    Would Putin’s Own People Punish Him for Invading Ukraine?
  • Henry Hale
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/henry-hale/
    Russia may be about to invade Ukraine. Russians don’t want it to.
  • Henry Hale
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/henry-hale/
    Putin Has Off-Ramps: Let’s Not Block Them
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    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/henry-hale/
    Authoritarian Rallying as Reputational Cascade? Evidence from Putin’s Popularity Surge after Crimea
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