Abstract
This issue of Russian Politics and Law focuses on the reaction in Russian society against the Westernizing reforms of democratization and privatization associated with the post-Soviet era in Russia. So pervasive and powerful have corruption and criminality become in Russian life that Kiva Maidanik applies the Western neologism "klep-tocracy" to the Russian political system today ("Corruption, Criminalization, Kleptocracy"). Coined to describe government by thieves in many Third World countries, the term is used by the author to describe what he regards as the fatally compromised Russian state. "Corruption," he says, "is the AIDS of democracy."