The Post-Communist World in the Twenty-First Century presents studies by senior scholars and practitioners that are highly relevant to contemporary political challenges. The democratic vision that accompanied the collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and East Central Europe has been replaced by a range of authoritarian, semi-authoritarian and democratic regimes, and growing division between Western and Russian influence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to renewed tensions ...

A riveting history and maritime adventure about priceless masterpieces originally destined for Catherine the Great.On October 1771, a merchant ship out of Amsterdam, Vrouw Maria, crashed off the stormy Finnish coast, taking her historic cargo to the depths of the Baltic Sea. The vessel was delivering a dozen Dutch masterpiece paintings to Europe’s most voracious collector: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Among the lost treasures was The Nursery...

A dynamic history of the Battle of Sitka that recognizes the vital importance of the Tlingit people, their fight against Imperial Russia, and how it changed the fate of the North America.“If the long-term plans of Peter the Great had been realized, then California never would have become a Spanish colony,” asserted the head of the Russian-American Company. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Russia was a rising power in North America. The Tsar’s empire extended ...

The postcommunist transitions produced two very different types of states. The "contractual" state is associated with the countries of Eastern Europe, which moved toward democratic regimes, consensual relations with society, and clear boundaries between political power and economic wealth. The "predatory" state is associated with the successors to the USSR, which instead developed authoritarian regimes, coercive relations with society, and poorly defined boundaries between...

This title was first published in 2000: As the El'tsin era has now drawn to a close, numerous questions remain unanswered regarding the course of Russia's post-Communist traditions. El'tsin's exit from the presidential stage provides an opportunity to assess the achievements of Russia's multi-faceted reforms, to explain the factors that have most shaped the reform process, and to identify the trends that are likely to continue under a presidential successor. This volume embodies such an ef...