Editor's Introduction

Abstract

"Russia in Relation to the Periphery" might be the title of this issue of Russian Politics and Law. The Russian state and Russian society seem increasingly to be on the margin and so to have something in common with what Johan Gaining called "the Periphery," a collection of Third World states subordinated economically and culturally, if not militarily, to the Center states in Western Europe and North America. Few Russians appreciate being consigned in academic analyses to the Third World. But widespread poverty, the breakdown of law and order, pervasive official corruption, statism, and government by kleptocracy suggest parallels to the Third World—despite Russia's First World nuclear weaponry and an ancient culture far more distinguished than its American counterpart.