The Estate Origins Of Democracy In Russia

Lankina traces the origins of Russia's inequalities over the past two centuries from the Tsarist institution of estates, through communism, to the present day.

This book discusses how ideas about democracy took shape in Russia. It considers serfdom, colonisation, autocracy and the various protests, rebellions and attempts to impose checks on this in the period before 1800. The book then examines in detail evolving thought about democracy in the nineteenth century, outlining the various sources and movements which contributed to this, emphasising in particular the important work of the thinker Michael Speransky. The book then assesses the experiments to implement democracy in 1905 and 1917, explaining why these experiments failed. Throughout, the book stresses the special conditions which pertained in Russia, showing how these conditions contributed to the particular nature of Russian democracy.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

In the absence of democratic state institutions, eastern European countries were considered to possess only myths of democracy. Working on the premise that democracy is not only an institutional arrangement but also a civilisational project, this book argues that mythical narratives help understanding the emergence of democracy without ‘democrats’. Examining different national traditions as well as pre-communist and communist narratives, myths are seen as politically fabricated ‘programmes of truth’ that form and sustain the political imagination. Appearing as cultural, literary, or historical resources, myths amount to ideology in narrative form, which actors use in political struggles for the sake of achieving social compliance and loyalty with the authority of new political forms. Drawing on a wide range of case studies including Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, this book argues that narratives about the past are not simply ‘legacies’ of former regimes but have actively shaped representations and meanings of democracy in the region. Taking different theoretical and methodological approaches, the power of myth is explored for issues such as leadership, collective identity-formation, literary representation of heroic figures, cultural symbolism in performative art as well as on the constitution of legitimacy and civic identity in post-communist democracies.

A compelling account of the birth of democracy in Russia, written by historian Arkady Joseph Sack. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Sack offers a fascinating insight into the political, social, and cultural forces that shaped Russia's democratic movement. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A vibrant civil society - characterized by the independently organized activity of people as citizens, undirected by state authority - is an essential support for the development of freedom, democracy, and prosperity. Thus it has been one important indicator of the success of post-communist transitions. This volume undertakes a systematic analysis of the development of civil society in post-Soviet Russia. An introduction and two historical chapters provide background, followed by chapters that analyze the Russian context and consider the roles of the media, business, organized crime, the church, the village, and the Putin administration in shaping the terrain of public life. Eight case studies then illustrate the range and depth of actual citizen organizations in various national and local community settings, and a concluding chapter weighs the findings and distills comparisons and conclusions.