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Seven leading specialists present chapters devoted to key themes in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian politics. Those themes include: the personal versus the institutional in the political process; legitimacy and legitimation; and change and collapse of a mono-organisational society. While the book focuses on these major themes, individual chapters deal with wide-ranging and even unusual cases: Graeme Gill analyses the legitimating functions of Moscow's architecture, Sheila Fitzpatrick uses the archives to draw a picture of Stalin "the boss" dealing with his closest colleagues, Eugene Huskey provides a detailed description of post-Soviet Russian pantouflage, and Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway present their different takes on Gorbachev and the Soviet collapse. Stephen Fortescue provides an overview of policy-making processes from Lenin and Putin, and Leslie Holmes updates the concept of goal-rational legitimacy."--

There are two big issues in the political science of post-communist transition. First, the relationship between rulers and ruled; second, governance arrangements within the executive. The first could be summed up as "politics," the second as "policy." The first has received the most attention: are regimes democratic, and if not what other feedback and accountability mechanisms exist? The general consensus is that post-Soviet Russia, particularly under Putin, is not democratic, in that – among other shortcomings – it does not have genuine electoral contests that can potentially produce a change in government.