SPECIAL ISSUE: Contemporary Russia: Development and Transformation Introduction

Thirty years ago, the world’s socialist camp began to disintegrate, the landmark event being the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. Notwithstanding, China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba adhered to the socialist road and carried out distinctive socialist reforms in accordance with their own national conditions, achieving varying degrees of success. At the same time, Mongolia and the Soviet countries, including Russia, abandoned socialism and implemented comprehensive transformations in the political, diplomatic, economic, and social fields. Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union’s Baltic states quickly joined NATO after shifting their political and diplomatic focus to the West and began to show hostility to Russia in military terms. This abrupt change in military relations was the inevitable result of their political and diplomatic transformation. Many years ago, a popular saying circulated to the effect that political transformation takes several days, diplomatic transformation several weeks, economic transformation several months, and social transformation several years. However, this adage may apply to small Eastern European countries, but it does not apply to Russia. It has taken Russia more than ten years to complete the “four transformations,” but it has not yet embarked on a “Russian path” with its own characteristics. Political transformation In terms of political transformation, it took Russia more than two years, starting from the August 19th incident in 1991, to remove “Soviet,” “Socialist” and “Union” from the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” the three core terms denoting the USSR political system. The removal of the three words represented the completion of Russia’s political transformation, marking the formation of a bureaucratic capitalist system. In return for the support provided by the “seven oligarchs,” Yeltsin, the then President of Russia, not only involved them in political and personnel decision-making, but also awarded them senior government posts. For example, one of the seven oligarchs, Vladimir Potanin, served as the First Deputy Prime Minister of the federal government overseeing Russia’s economic reforms, and Boris Berezovsky, another of the seven oligarchs, was a former Deputy Secretary of the Federal Security Council and oversaw national security affairs.