Russia After Putin: Cathy Young has an interesting summary of the state of Russian politics in the wake of President Vladimir Putin's replacement by his handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev. Although Putin's authoritarian policies have rolled back much of the liberalization that occurred in the 1990s, Russia is still a much freer society than it was under communism. Indeed, as Young shows, it has become a fairly typical Third World pseudo-democracy with partly fraudulent elections, a corrupt government dominated by cronyism, and significant, but far from totalitarian, repression of political dissent. As in many other Third World countries, the government tries to divert the people's attentions away from its own shortcomings by spouting nationalist rhetoric and blaming all problems on Western interference. At the moment, the Russian ruling elite is actually enjoying some genuine popularity - largely as a result of economic growth driven by high oil prices, as well as successful efforts to harness Russian nationalism into support for the regime.
http://reason.com/news/show/124936.htmlhttp://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_03_23-2008_03_29.shtml
