The Agony of the Russian Idea

The Journey of Humanity by Oded Galor: A Review Essay

“…Critics of shock therapy for post‐Communist countries, for example, made exactly the same class of arguments. McDaniel (1996) is a classic discussion of the historical and cultural impediments to reform in Russia under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Links to geography and genetic diversity as deep roots to these would have added nothing to such arguments.…”

The EU and Eurasia

“…Tim McDaniel has described this idea as the certainty that Russia has a distinctive cultural and historical tradition that sets it apart from the rest of Europe and guarantees its future as a great power. 23 Not surprisingly, the problem with this idea of Russia -la grande Russie and la Russie éternelle -is that the Russian state can no longer support it, the Russian people can no longer endure it, and Europe can no longer afford it.…”

Russian Public Opinion on Human Rights and the War in Chechnya

“…Many among the legion of studies reporting high public support for democracy in Russia include views on various civil liberties-in addition to elections, parties, and other institutionalized forms of political participation-as measures of democratic norms (Hahn, 1991;Reisinger, 1994, 1997;Gibson, 1995Gibson, , 1996Whitefield and Evans, 1996;Bahry, Boaz, and Gordon, 1997;Carnaghan, 2001;McFaul, 2001, 2002). In fact, notwithstanding claims to the contrary (e.g., Colton and McFaul, 2002), most survey-based studies defy the older conventional wisdom that portrays Russians as culturally predisposed to reject individual liberties and other democratic norms in favor of collectivism and a strong leader (Keenan, 1986;Laqueur, 1989;McDaniel, 1996). Instead, the majority of studies find the opposite: Russians appear to support democracy.…”