The growth of corruption after 1991 was probably unavoidable. The privatization of the state economy created favorable conditions for corruption, which did not exist before. The feudalization of a society, with its weakening of the state and the high autonomy of its office holders, was another major factor behind the outburst of corruption. However, while these “objective” factors account for a great part of corruption’s growth, the transformation of the leaders of the country to people who encouraged corruption for their own benefit—one of the major elements of feudalization—also played an extremely large role in spreading corruption inside the country. Corruption poses greater concerns to society in the long term. Russian corruption undermines labor ethics, particularly among younger generations. Russian youths firmly believe that bribes and connections are the best and perhaps only way to become successful. Widespread corruption creates a parallel, semi-feudal chain of command that competes with the official hierarchy. The weakness of law enforcement agencies, as well as the army—now almost totally demoralized—is, to a great extent, the product of corruption.

The author challenges the dogma that complete openness of the country to the external world has only a positive impact on its current state of affairs and its future. He uses post-Soviet Russia to show that in several respects openness, in particularly systematic emigrations of active people from the country, creates a lot of the problems which, however, can be partially solved if society has true democratic institutions.

Vladimir Putin provides us with an excellent example of a politician whose attitude toward ideology is instrumental to his political longevity. He has shown that in the fight between ideology and political expedience, to maintain authority and control within the country, or to achieve geopolitical ambitions in the international arena, ideology will almost always lose the battle. It is well known that the major threat to political power stems often not from the adversary who holds diametrically opposite views, but from the rivals who share almost the same ideological position. The closer the ideological position is of a rival, the more intense the competition. For just this reason Putin is implacable toward Communists who share many of his views. He tries as much as possible to reduce the political role of the Communist party – the most serious opposition to the regime – by using the same underhanded tactics which are used against the liberals.

During his second term, Putin’s foreign policy was strongly influenced by the belief that the West’s hostility could help the opposition change the current regime, as the West had done in Ukraine and Georgia. A regime change would deprive the ruling elite, mostly people from the security police and army, of their power and illegally acquired wealth. Moscow restored, in early 2000, the ideology of Russia’s “encirclement” from the 1920s, which suggested that the country was surrounded by enemies in order to legitimize the regime. At the same time, as in the past, Moscow tried to punish the Western governments for their disrespect for the regime with an aggressive and uncooperative foreign policy.

The article is about Putin's ‘Jewish anomaly’. Against all expectations, Putin during his tenure as president of the Russian Federation showed in various ways his concern about the life of Jews in his country.

The ability of an Orwellian society to bend the will of individuals and force them to change their minds is well known. Putin’s Russia, however, has proved that not only a harsh totalitarian state, such as the Soviet Union, but also a somewhat milder, authoritarian regime is able to achieve almost the same result. Such a regime can threaten to diminish the income, privileges or social status of prominent people. By murdering or jailing only a few active people (businesspeople, journalists and politicians), the regime can show its potential opponents that everyone in the country is vulnerable. Looking back on Stalin’s time, one cannot help but think that he could have achieved his goals and stayed in power until his death without using such horrendous acts of violence. The ideological evolution of Yegor Gaidar represents a strong piece of evidence in support of this thesis.

The attitudes of leaders toward their personal future are very important to domestic and international politics. These views are particularly vital in the case of leaders of nondemocratic regimes who could face legal prosecution for their corrupt acts or violations of human rights in their own country and abroad. In spite of these fears, however, the leaders in many authoritarian societies trespass laws, both domestic and international, in order to preserve their power and enrich their families. They expose themselves to the danger of the prosecution after they leave office or lose control of the regime. In this context, the author pays special attention to Vladimir Putin’s political future and to the developments in Russia, which favor and disfavor his continued stay in power after 2008.

The article’s topic is the attitudes of the Russians toward their social institutions. As it will be shown, Russia is a country, much more than any other, that mistrusts its social institutions, political institutions in particular. There is no one institution that can garner more than 40 to 50 percent of the nation’s trust. Indeed, in terms of their lack of confidence in social institutions, the Russians are behind not only the most advanced countries in the world, but even countries known for their unstable political systems, such as Colombia or Nigeria.

An individual’s vision of the future is an important factor that shapes his or her quality of life and behavior. The character and intensity of this factor varies from society to society, group to group, and from one moment to the next. Four actors are central to the analysis of the Russians’ perspective of the future: the leadership, political elites, business elites and the masses. The members of each of these groups have their own ‘‘time horizon,’’ that is, the length of time in the future that influences their decisions, moods, and quality of life. The length of this period depends mostly on how they perceive the level of stability in society, now and in the future. As an actor’s pessimism about the future increases, the time horizon decreases. In extreme cases, the person’s time horizon can decline to the point where they disregard what may or may not happen tomorrow. Another important factor is the power and readiness of the particular actor to influence the future of society and its institutions, not to mention their own lives. When people believe that it is impossible to change the future, or the fate of their nation, they become either fatalistic, or tend to violate social norms, resulting in crime, corruption and violence. The leadership and the elites in the country play an important role in influencing whether the masses believe that something can be done to change the nation for the better.

The interplay between the state and the super rich has been a subject of intense debate since the time of Aristotle, who introduced the notion of oligarchs and the oligarchic regime as the ruling of a few rich people. The ideologically loaded debates about the role of wealthy people in society can be found in each country in the contemporary world. In recent times, the fact that Silvio Berlusconi is both Italy’s prime minister and the richest person in the country (who has almost complete control over Italian TV) has aroused intense debates about the impact of big business on politics (Stille, 2003). It is not surprising that the case of the Italian prime minister draws attention in Russia, where he is often compared to both the Russian president as well as to the oligarchs (Remnik, 2003). A dramatic struggle between Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose wealth was estimated before his arrest at eight-billion dollars, 1 unfolded in the summer and fall of 2003. This conflict will likely be recounted in any future textbook that discusses the relationship between political power and big money.

In the last few years, significant changes in the attitudes toward the West have occurred in Russia. While “old” Russian liberals, like Egor Gaidar, treated the West as a Russian ally, the “new” liberals, such as Boris Nemtsov, perceived the West as a rival approaching, in this respect, Russian communists and nationalists who see in the West an eternal enemy. The author describes this change using various information from the Russian media and surveys.

The future of Russian-Chinese relations remains one of the most obscure issues facing the world at the end of the 20th century. So far, these relations have been rather friendly, and Moscow is seemingly unconcerned about the growing economic disparity between the two countries which evidently favors China. However, outside the Kremlin many politicians and experts express genuine fear about China. They continue to remind the people that, only a few dozen years ago, both nations were on the brink of a nuclear confrontation. The author of this paper muses on whether the old geopolitical conflicts have already left the historical scene, and if the 21st century will witness the cooperation of the two former communist giants with a common border three thousand miles long. Being inclined to believe that geopolitics is still a force to be reckoned with, the author points to the Russian Far East and also to Central Asia where he considers a confrontation between both countries is most probable. The author also discusses how regionalizatiou in Russia and in China can radically change the geopolitical situation in Asia and in the whole world.