The troubled birth of Russian democracy

by Michael McFaul

The demise of communism in the Soviet Union could not have occurred without the activism of dissident, anticommunist leaders who created and nourished a climate in which ordinary Russians gained the courage to stand up to and defeat communist control. But with communism ousted, what new form of government and what new leaders will emerge in Russia, a society that has never known democracy? Michael McFaul, a research associate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, and Sergei Markov, an assistant professor at Moscow State University, interviewed anti-communist leaders and collected the documents of anticommunist parties in the months preceding and immediately following the August 1991 attempted coup d'etat. To examine the range of the political spectrum in Russia, they also talked to procommunist leaders who emerged to oppose Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, nationalist and anti-Semitic leaders of movements such as Pamyat', labor unions, Christian movem