Böcker av Oleg Kharkhordin

Main Concepts of Russian Politics addresses key concepts of political life in Russia. Specific attention is given to how Russian terms relate to their English-language equivalents.

Marxism was the loser in the Cold War, but Oleg Kharkhordin is not surprised that liberal democracy failed to take root after the Soviet Union's dissolution. He suggests that Russians find a path to freedom by looking to the classical tradition of republican self-government and civic engagement already familiar from their history and literature.

Examining the period from the Russian Revolution to the fall of Gorbachev, this title demonstrates that Party rituals - which forced each Communist to reflect intensely and repeatedly on his or her "self", an entirely novel experience for many of them - had their antecedents in the Orthodox Christian practices of doing penance in the public gaze.