Gail Lapidus writes that the war in Chechnya has played a complex and highly negative role in Russia's political development. It served in some respects as a testing ground for policies that would be expanded to embrace the Russian Federation more broadly. It has been a major obstacle to the progress of reform and democratization in Russia, and has rather elicited and strengthened the more coercive and authoritarian impulses within the Russian elite. It has equally been a barometer of broader trends in Russian state-building and is highlighting many of the dramatic new departures this process is taking under President Putin.

This book compares sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union, two regions beset by the breakdown of states suffering from extreme official corruption, organized crime extending into warlordism, and the disintegration of economic institutions and public institutions for human services. The contributors not only study state breakdown but also compare the consequences of post-communism with those of post-colonialism.

This chapter looks at the processes of state formation in postcolonial Africa and the former Soviet Union and asks whether those processes make African and Eurasian states especially vulnerable to civil war. In particular, we ask whether the experience of Africa's postcolonial states suggests a similar historical trajectory for the new states that emerged in Eurasia at the beginning of the 1990s. We argue that, despite important differences between the two historical experiences, conditions surrounding state formation in Africa and post-Soviet Eurasia have inhibited the formation of stable and legitimate states and have made war more likely.

The chapter beings by outlining three broad explanatory factors that scholars have used in trying to explain civil wars since 1945: ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization. We argue that these explanations neglect what Klaus Gantzel referred to as "the historicity of war," by which he means "the structural dynamics which condition the emergence and behaviour of actors" in any given period (Gantzel 1997, 139). We then suggest that a focus on state formation is helpful in providing the historical context for understanding civil wars. After surveying the experience of state-building in postcolonial Africa and in Eurasia, we conclude with comparisons and contrasts between the regions.

The book chapter is a revised and updated version of "Asymmetrical Federalism and State Breakdown in Russia," which originally was published in 1999 in Post-Soviet Affairs.

The only Reader on post-Soviet Russian politics, this important book brings together the best published work from a wide variety of sources. Unusually for a Reader, it also includes many up-to-date, specially commissioned contributions. Some forty of the world's leading specialists on Russian politics, a third of them Russians, cover institutional design, elections, parties, federalism, regional politics, presidency and legislature, economic reform and economic interests, foreign policy, public opinion, the mass media, and prospects for democracy.

Substantial editorial introductions to every section provide the student with essential background information, detailing the historical development, contemporary relevance, and current debates for each topic area and each individual chapter. The chapters themselves have been carefully selected and edited to be as useful and relevant as possible to all students of contemporary Russian politics,

With analysis of major recent developments, including the Duma election of 1999, the Presidential election of 2000, and the institutional changes launched by President Putin, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to political institutions and processes in Putin's Russia.

Dr. Lapidus summarizes factors, both domestic and international, pushing for and against regional separatism from the Russian Federation. Attention then turns to factors influencing the further devolution of authority from central to regional officials. A typology is offered of types of issues animating conflict in center-periphery relations. The article then discusses the impact of the August 1998 crisis on these trends and on prospects for the future.

In this book, distinguished U.S. and Russian scholars analyze the great challenges confronting post-Communist Russia and examine the Yeltsin government's attempts to deal with them. Focusing on problems of state- and nation-building, economic reform, demilitarization, and the definition of Russia's national interests in its relations with the outside world, the authors trace the complex interplay between the communist legacy and efforts to chart new directions in both domestic and foreign policy in the years ahead.

Chapter 3 in The New Russia: Troubled Transformation, edited by Gail W. Lapidus.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the emergence of 15 independent states on its territory mark the end not only of the Soviet system itself but also of a centuries-long process of state-building that created the Russian empire. In the process of serving and extending this empire, the Soviet state unwittingly stimulated a process of nation-building among its constituent peoples. which ultimately contributed to its collapse. The papers presented in this volume are an attempt to analyze and comment on the origins, evolution, and demise of protracted experiment.