SRAS Announces Updated Resource on Russian Politics
From: "Josh Wilson" <jwilson@sras.org>
Subject: Russian Politics Resource
Date: Wed, 11 May 2011
As Russia enters a new election cycle, I thought that some of your readers might be interested in the following free resource, recently fully updated and expanded:
SRAS Announces Updated Resource on Russian Politics
The page may be accessed here: http://www.sras.org/library_russian_politics
In the decade between 1991 and 2001, English-speaking reporters and policy wonks were buzzing about Russia's complex, tumultuous, and at-times concerning domestic political arena. Although the liberal reformers had an upper hand with Yeltsin in the presidency, they faced opposition from the still-powerful Communists and the rising nationalists. After 2001, with the rise of Vladimir Putin, simplification of Russian politics became increasingly the norm, boiled down to a single a man and a handful of adjectives to describe him.
Perhaps because of this history, many students on our study abroad programs to Russia can consistently name two political forces in Russia: Vladimir Putin and Yabloko. The concerning part about this situation for me personally, however, is that many of our students are aspiring wonks. They want to go on to work for the US government, helping to develop and institute policy concerning Russia.
While Vladimir Putin is undeniably the most powerful face in Russian politics today, those who want to work with Russia's political structures are going to need a far deeper and more up-to-date view of how Russian politics actually work: what systems are at play, what ideologies are dominant, who are the major players and, perhaps most importantly, what do the Russian people actually want and expect from governments? Foreign policy that is formulated with the interests of the peoples affected in mind is most often the most effective foreign policy.
This page has been developed primarily for young Americans like our students. It represents a wide look at Russia's domestic politics with some focus on its foreign policy organs and actors. We hope that this small effort will help better prepare students for not only writing college papers today, but perhaps, in writing better policy papers about Russia later and bringing about a more stable and more fruitful US-Russia relationship.
We would also like to thank our intern Elizabeth Bagot for her assistance in updating this page in early 2011. The page was originally compiled in 2007. We will continue to periodically update this resource to reflect the state of modern Russian politics.
Josh Wilson
Assistant Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor in Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
SRAS.org
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