From the USSR to Russia. Authoritarian Transformation at the Turn of the 21st century

In his monograph, Krotkov Vladimir Olegovich, candidate of political sciences, analyzes the metamorphoses that took place in the socio-economic and political spheres in 1985-2009 that were transformational in nature. The scientific work examines the whole twenty-five-year period of our country’s historical transformation as part of the three – Soviet, post-Soviet and neo-post-Soviet – main stages, which had their own chronological framework and were characterized by its own specificity and internal logic of development. Relying on the overall characteristics he had formulated, the author proposed his own definition of the political regime, which made it possible to reveal its types, subtypes and, what can heuristically be called as its polycratic and monocratic forms, which received the researcher’s special attention. On the basis of a multifactorial political analysis, he identified and revealed the specific features of the political regime within the framework of the three stages of Russia’s historical transformation, enabling him to draw a general conclusion about the functioning of the authoritarian political regime of both one-party and various personality subtypes throughout the 25-year long transitional period. The monograph is intended for both specialists in the field of political science and for a wide range of readers.