State, regime and Russian political development

The Russian state at the end of the Yeltsin period was supposedly so emasculated that it had no potential to revive itself. But revive itself it has in some measure and this requires some explanation. This paper tries to illustrate how we might more profitably conceptualise state and regime building in Russia and argues that Russia has far from finished either state or regime building. It argues that the problem with most past efforts at analysing the development of the Russian state is that they have not distinguished between regime and state, and the different pressures to, and possibilities for, building either. It reviews and seeks to improve on an approach to conceptualising postcommunist state development and apply this to Russia. The paper analyses Russia’s recent political development to show its unsettled pattern of regime and state building, and looks at how other post-Soviet states have had more settled patterns of regime and state building than Russia and what this means. The paper concludes that we should be cautious about the future of the Russian state and should recognise that the pressures of state building in Russia mean that current patterns of political development may prove as susceptible to change as those that preceded them.