russia

• The first president of the Russian Federation was Boris Yeltsin.
• Boris Yeltsin declared the end of the Soviet regime.
• Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000 and continued the oligarchy.
• Vladimir Putin has been aggressive in containing oligarchs' political and economic powers.
• Vladimir Putin has been centralizing power as a whole.
• Vladimir Putin ended his presidency and returned to his role as prime minister.
• Russia has no experience with democracy or a free market.
• Russia has illiberal elections, direct elections, and other democratic structures.
• Russia cannot strengthen or maintain democracy because it has a long history of autocratic rule.
• Russia is a hybrid country, with some democracy and mostly authoritarian rule.
• Public authority and political power in Russia comes from the Politburo of the Communist party.
• The Politburo is a small group of men who climbed the ranks of the party through an ordered path from local party soviets (nomenklatura) to leadership.
• When the Soviet Union dissolved, so did the power and authority within.
• Legitimacy in Russia was very low at the start of the 21st century due to the regime change recently before.
• Legitimacy in Russia has stabilized with Putin and Medvedev returning to old authoritarian ways.
• Legitimacy in Russia is based on tsars and dictatorship of party rulers in the 20th century.
• Stalinism changed the regime into totalitarianism, less invasive rule than authoritarian regimes were.
• Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to take away stalinisms power and facilitate the downfall of the regime.
• The Constitution of 1993 provided a strong president, however power is checked by popular election and lower house of legislature (Duma).
• Boris Yeltsin attempted to strengthen the constitutions legitimacy by requiring referendums by the people.
• Legitimacy in Russia was tested by coups and conflict between Yeltsin and Duma.
• The government stabilized back when presidential power was transitioned to Putin.
• Absolute, centralized rule in Russia was established by tsars, who held absolute power and allowed for invaders to overrun plains.
• Centralized power in Russia was supported and characterized the authoritarian regime of the 20th century.
• Extensive cultural heterogeneity in Russia meant the area was very diverse.
• The “Russian Federation” reflects this diversity, which includes republics and autonomous regions based on ethnicity.
• A slavophile is a lover of Slavs, and leads to pride in Slavic customs, language, religion, and history.
• Tendency to value isolation in Russia comes from Tsar Peter the Great, who used the western model to modernize Russia with a stronger army, a navy, an infrastructure of roads and communication, a reorganized bureaucracy, and a “Window on the West.”
• Gorbachev introduced Glasnost, more open discussion and criticism of the government by citizens, which turned into hostility and revolted because people wanted independence from Soviet control.
• Abrupt regime change to procedural democracy in 1991 saw president Yeltsin adopting western style of government to create the Russian Federation.
• Tsars were autocratic from the beginning, controlling over land and protective over attacks and invasions.
• Attempts to gradually industrialize Russia failed and Joseph Stalin’s rapid economic change plan led to the Soviet Union.
• During the 20th century communist party rule, the regime began ruling in 1917 and ended in 1991 when a failed coup created chaos.
• Since then, Putin has limited democratic reforms.
• Perestroika, the least successful reform, tried to keep the old Soviet structure, transferring economic powers into private hands.
• Gorbachev introduced Democratization, keeping the old Soviet structure and using some democracy, creating people's deputies with directly elected officials and a new position of president that was selected by congress.
• The purges were a time when Stalin killed millions of people at a time, hating disloyalty and the punishment was death.
• The December revolt of 1825 was the effect of the inability of tsars to adopt western political institutions.
• Government passed laws not allowing Russians into those hated countries during the long period of autocratic rule by tsars.
• Lenin’s followers were called Bolsheviks, who took control of the government.