Institutional Developments in the USSR during Perestroika

The inquiry was aimed at estimating the impact of the constitutional reforms of 1988 on the functioning of Soviet representative institutions. The project involved description and analysis of the changing patterns of political behaviour, legitimisation, recruitment and participation against the background of the Russian traditional and Soviet political cultures.

It was carried out at the Analytical Centre for Problems of Socioeconomic and Scientific/Technological Development (presently Centre for Analysis of Scientific and Industrial Policies), the Russian Academy of Sciences, in 1991-1992.

The findings were presented at

o   The Fourth Joint Soviet-American Seminar on Interdependence (Moscow, Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 26-28 June 1991), see Political Leadership and Institutional Innovation: An Approach to Comparative Analysis of Political Institutions;

o   The International Workshop on Christianity, Democracy, Russia (Moscow, 27-28 November 1992), see Democracy and Sobornost’: Theses / Demokratiya i sobornost’: Tezisy;

o   The Twenty-first Annual Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium of Political Research (Leyden, the Netherlands, 2-8 April 1993), see Populist Rhetoric and Democratic Culture: Patterns of Self-Identification at the USSR Congress of People's Deputies;

o   A Round Table of the Nineteenth World Congress of Philosophy (Moscow, 22-28 August 1993) on Ibero-America and Eurasia: Traditions and Modernisation, see Evraziya – Iberoamerika: Traditsii i modernizatsiya [Ibero-America and Eurasia: Traditions and Modernisation];

o   The International Conference on Political History on the Eve of the 21st Century: Traditions and Innovations (Institute of Universal History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 18-20 May 1994), see Demokratiya i sobornost’: Krizis traditsionnoy politicheskoy kul’tury i perspektivy rossiyskoy demokratii (Tezisy) / Democracy and Sobornost’: The Crisis of the Traditional Political Culture and the Prospects for Russian Democracy (Summary);

o   The Sixteenth World Congress of the International Political Science Association (Berlin, August 21-25, 1994), see Democracy and Sobornost’: Prospects for Russian Parliamentarianism;

o   The 20th World Congress of Philosophy (Boston, 10-16 August 1998), see Sobornost’ in Russian Philosophical and Political Tradition;

o   The Ninth International Christmas Educational Readings (Moscow, 21-26 January 2001), see Sobornost’ kak religioznyy i politicheskiy ideal (Tezisy) [Sobornost’ as a Religious and as a Political Ideal (Theses)].

and published in

o   Überall Klippen: Innen- und außenpolitische Gegebenheiten Rußlands / Herausgegeben von M. Harms, P. Linke (Berlin: Verlag Volk und Welt, 1992), as Die Bürde der Tradition: Politische Kultur und politische Innovation [The Burden of Tradition: Political Culture and Political Innovations];

o   Discourse & Society, Vol. 4 (1993), No. 1, as Parliamentarianism and Sobornost’: Two Models of Representative Institutions in Russian Political Culture;

o   Russia’s Road to Democracy: Parliament, Communism and Traditional Culture, Aldershot, Hampshire; Brookfiled, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing Co., 1993;

o   D. Beetham (ed.), Defining and Measuring Democracy (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, New Delhi: SAGE, 1994, as The Idea of Democracy in the West and in the East;

o   Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, 1995, No. 1, as Parlamentskaya deyatelnost’ i politicheskaya kul’tura [Parliamentary Activities and Political Culture];

o   L. Repina, V. Sogrin, D. Model (eds.), Politicheskaya istoriya na poroge XXI veka: Traditsii i novatsii / Political History on the Eve of the XXI Century: Traditions and Innovations (Moscow: Institute of Universal History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1995), as Demokratiya i sobornost’: Krizis traditsionnoy politicheskoy kul’tury i perspektivy rossiyskoy demokratii (Tezisy) / Democracy and Sobornost’: The Crisis of the Traditional Political Culture and the Prospects for Russian Democracy (Summary);

o   Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, 1995, No. 6, as Demokratiya i sobornost’: Predtstavitel’naya vlast’ v traditsionnoy rossiyskoy i sovetskoy politicheskoy kul’ture [Democracy and Sobornost’: Representative Power in the Traditional Russian and Soviet Political Cultures];

o   Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Abstracts of Invited and Contributed Papers / Prepared by S. Dawson et al. (Boston, 1998), as Sobornost’ in Russian Philosophical and Political Tradition: Abstract;

o   G. Ashin, A. Shestopal (eds.), Filosofiya mirovoy politiki: Aktual’nye problemy (Uchebnoe posobie) (Moscow: Moscow State Institute for International Relations, 2000), as Parlamentarizm: Filosofiya i tekhnologiya demokratiy [Parliamentarianism: The Philosophy and Techniques of Democracies].