Lilia Shevtsova

Lilia Shevtsova is the author of Interregnum: Russia Between Past and Future (2014) and Putin’s Russia (2010). 

October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4

The Kremlin Emboldened: Paradoxes of Decline

Read the full essay here. The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are…

July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3

The Maidan and Beyond: The Russia Factor

The regime of Vladimir Putin has been a key driver of the crisis in Ukraine. Under challenge at home for several years now, it turned to Ukraine in part to firm up its own grip on power in Russia.

April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2

Reading Russia: The Return of Personalized Power

Read the full essay here. In contrast to authoritarian power structures, which rest on a form of bureaucratic corporatism that makes the leader its hostage, the regime in Moscow rests on personalized power, something that signals a return to the traditional Russian political matrix. The regime has fused power and property in a manner that…


Civil-Military Relations and Democracy

"Provides a wealth of information and some fresh thinking on the role of the military and civil-military relations in many parts of the world. The intellectual quality of most contributions is high and they are concise and well-written."—Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics

Democracy after Communism

Is the challenge of building and consolidating democracy under postcommunist conditions unique, or can one apply lessons learned from other new democracies? The essays collected in this volume explore these questions, while tracing how the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have fared in the decade following the fall of communism.