Showing results for "Science and Democracy" in Russia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

Agents of Influence reveals the secret history of an intelligence agency gone out of control, accountable to no one but itself and intent on subverting Western politics on a near-inconceivable scale. In 1985, 1,300 KGB officers were stationed in the USA. The FBI only had 350 counter-intelligence officers. Since the early days of the Cold War, the KGB seduced parliamentarians and diplomats, infiltrated the highest echelons of the Civil Service, and planted fake news in papers across the world.