Editor's Introduction

Abstract

The nagging, and sometimes bloody, obstacles to establishing a new Russian statehood provide the theme unifying most of the articles in this issue of Russian Politics and Law. Ethnic conflict predominates while the internal struggle for power at the center follows hard on its heels. In our first selection A.G. Zdravomyslov presents a magisterial overview of the collapse of the Soviet empire. But he also gets down to cases, sketching the backdrop to the shattering events surrounding Moscow's imposing its constitutional authority in Chechnia, an event that forged the most recent link between the two crises of Russian statehood. While the Western media have trained their cameras on the battle for Grozny and for control of oil refineries and pipelines running through the region, the author usefully lists a number of ethnic polities within the Russian Federation where blood has not been spilled, challenging implicitly the notion that Russia will inevitably be Yugoslavia writ large.