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| Where Is the “Pilot Region” Heading? |
Vadim Smirnov
The Kaliningrad Region can be called a “war child.” Eastern Prussia with its capital Koenigsberg would not have had such a knotty history if Germany had not lost World War II. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the region found itself in completely new and hitherto unseen geopolitical conditions. |
| Missing in Translation |
Piotr Dutkiewicz
The lack of real modernization policies of the last four to five years cannot be continued without serious, negative, long-term consequences. The only good thing about the current crisis is that no one can deny the necessity for accelerated change and the need for a larger, societal debate about the future of the country. |
| Tradition Breaks Reform |
Leonid Sedov
Russian society tends to form tiers of mafias through the actions of the principles of hierarchy and rank-worship on the one hand, and adolescent group solidarity on the other, with the upper-ruling mafia as the occupational force. |
| Without Ideology or Order |
Timofei Bordachev
The greatest achievement in Russian foreign policy over the past 20 years has been the renunciation of messianism. Yet today Russia has to choose again between a policy based on global ideas, one that is mainly pursued by the United States, and sovereign pragmatism, which is characteristic of the foreign policies of China, India, and – increasingly – Europe. |
| A Different View on the European Anniversary |
Fyodor Lukyanov
Europe recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the anti-Communist revolution that put an end to the division of the world into two ideological blocs. The events of 1989 opened a new chapter in global politics; however, even two decades later, the full content of this chapter remains unclear. |
| Approaching the Far Away |
Alexander Chepurin
The presence of an influential and consolidated Russian community abroad meets Russia’s national interests. A community interwoven and integrated in the public and political life of the country where it lives – rather than an assimilated or marginalized one – could make up a full-fledged part of the global Russian world. |
| How to Overcome the National Crisis |
Victor Kremenyuk
The theory and history of international relations abounds in the misconception that the bigger a country, the greater its freedom of action. In reality, it is the other way around. |
| Russia’s Modernization: At Another Fork in the Road |
Dmitry Badovsky
Solution to the problems of power and the destiny of modernization has been put off until the 2012 election, when the final choice of the parameters of future development could be determined by either Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin or Dmitry Medvedev’s continued presidency. |
| Is There a Demand for Modernization in Russia? |
Mikhail Afanasiev
The consumer adaptive individualism and mutual mistrust within elites, together with the specifics of “sovereign democracy,” are a major obstacle to a normal political withdrawal from the crisis through the establishment of effective parties or factions within the ruling party. |
| An Exhausted Resource |
Olga Kryshtanovskaya
The Russian state itself became actually the only source for the modernization efforts. This is the major problem of modernization projects in authoritarian states: the government has to face social problems alone. Even with the tacit support from the public, it is difficult to address large-scale tasks in the absence of active civil society. |
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