The Soviet Model of Modernity and the Political Transformations in Post-Communist Russia

Professor Mikhail Maslovski (Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod; Erasmus Mundus IMRCEES Visiting Scholar)

5.30pm (tea and coffee from 5pm), Central and East European Studies Seminar Room, 8-9 Lilybank Gardens

The importance of the civilisational approach to the study of Russian politics has been emphasised recently by Richard Sakwa and other scholars. In the paper I will focus on civilisational analysis as a perspective in historical sociology worked out by Shmuel Eisenstadt and Johann Arnason. The study of political change in Russia on the basis of this approach should take into account the role of the Soviet model of modernity in the reproduction of political structures and the impact of Soviet imperial legacy on political processes. In the paper Russia’s political transformations during the last decade will be regarded as an authoritarian turn of a post-imperial democracy. It will be argued that the dynamics of democratisation and de-democratisation in Russia represent a case of path dependency which is both post-imperial and post-communist.

All welcome

The CEES West Coast Seminar Series is supported by the MacFie Bequest, named after Professor Alec MacFie, Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University from 1945 to 1958. 

Enquiries: Terry.Cox@glasgow.ac.uk, +44 (0)141 330 5585

First published: 13 September 2012

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