What do you think?
Rate this book
Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System
Examines the history and functioning of Russia's post-Soviet political system–an “imitation democracy”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of “imitation democracy,” marked by “a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule.” How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future?
These questions animate Dmitrii Furman’s Imitation Democracy , a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, and a thorough knowledge of both official and unofficial histories, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states.
Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman’s narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia’s political landscape, culminating in Putin’s third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the “form” and “content” of imitation democracy, “the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of “imitation democracy,” marked by “a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule.” How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future?
These questions animate Dmitrii Furman’s Imitation Democracy , a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, and a thorough knowledge of both official and unofficial histories, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states.
Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman’s narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia’s political landscape, culminating in Putin’s third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the “form” and “content” of imitation democracy, “the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power.”
208 pages, Hardcover
Published November 22, 2022
2 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 21, 2023
The explanations for historical events should not merely be the "traditionalist mindset of the masses", "Russian mindset", "Russian consciousness" or "cultures conducive to democracy" in my opinion, but Furman was a comparative historian of religions before 1991 and it shows here. It is an overdue and significant translation, though. We still don't have enough English translations of post-Soviet (quasi-)academic publications written in Russian as one can also realize in the "works cited" section of this book.
March 5, 2024
*4.5 stars
January 2, 2023
A light read to start the year!
November 16, 2025
According to Keith Gessen’s foreword to Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System, Dmitrii Furman was a Russian scholar whose interests started in comparative religion but developed over the 90s and early 2000s to focus on political developments in the post-Soviet states. As Gessen explains, this was an unusual trajectory for a member of the Russian intelligentsia over this period. Furman also seems to have been unusual for the breadth and dynamism of his interests.
Gessen’s foreword makes the case for a full intellectual biography of a fascinating life. What it doesn’t do is make obvious why this book, which was published in Russia under a title that translates to “Spiral Motion” in 2010, was published in English in 2022. While the Russo-Ukrainian War has increased interest in Russia among English-language readers, Furman’s book is not about Russian militarism or nationalism, and isn’t even really about President Vladimir Putin. Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System focuses on political developments during the presidency of Boris Yelstin, which continued (according to Furman’s argument) into the early Putin era.
After some preliminary comments about Soviet and pre-Soviet democratic prospects, the bulk of the book considers how the favourability of political conditions for democratisation in Russia changed between 1991 and 2010. The presentation is broadly chronological during the Yeltsin years, before taking a more thematic approach after Putin assumes the presidency in 2000. The analysis is followed by a brief discussion of potential future developments (from the perspective of 2010). For the English-language edition, Tony Wood supplies an afterword that attempts to update this discussion to 2022.
If it is not clear exactly why Verso chose to publish this English edition in 2022, what is clear is that they have done English-language audiences a significant service. This is a fascinating and provocative book that deserves a wide audience among English-language readers interested in Russia.
Most observers would agree that Russia in 2024 is further from democracy than it was during the Yelstin years. The question is, how much further? This is an extremely important question for the future of democracy in Russia. If the prospects for genuine democratisation in the 1990s were good and Russia fell short due to bad luck or bad leadership, then we might hope that fortuitous changes at the end of the Putin era could put Russia back on the path to democracy. The prospects may currently seem bleak, but if a change in leadership to Putin derailed Russian democratisation, then a change from Putin could reverse this.
Furman’s analysis runs counter to this hopeful interpretation. In his view, the Putin regime (at least up until 2010) is a clear and inevitable continuation of the Yelstin model. He argues that Yelstin’s leadership never offered the prospect of genuine democratisation. His claim is not that Yelstin was a cynical demagogue – it is most likely, he suggests, that Yeltsin believed at least some of his rhetoric at least some of the time, displaying neither “deliberate mendacity [nor] deep conviction” (p. 10).
The fundamental problem was that when Yeltsin emerged as the leader of Russia from the ruins of the Soviet Union, “a movement that had appeared democratic in its postulated and subjective ideological goals nonetheless came to power through thoroughly undemocratic means.” The bitterly ironic consequence was that the “victory of the democrats meant the elimination of the vague prospects for Russia’s democratic development [in 1991]” (p. 41). Anti-democratic decisions made by Yelstin during his presidency, ostensibly to protect Russia’s fledgling democracy, then moved Russia further down its undemocratic path.
Having taken power undemocratically in the name of democracy, the only way that Yeltsin could have provided a pathway to democratisation would have been by fostering an opposition that could ultimately defeat him in a democratic transition. This was naturally a tall order, particularly given that the most likely opposition force for most of the Yelstin period was the Communist Party.
A return to Communist rule would have been unappetising for any supporter of democracy in the 1990s. Nonetheless, Furman argues that Yelstin’s victory over the Communist’s Gennady Zyuganov in the 2016 presidential election was one of three political crises in the period when the road not taken was the one that could have led to democratisation. The other two were when Yelstin faced threats from within the democrats – the 1993 standoff with the parliament under Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and the leadup to the 2000 presidential election (when Furman suggests that a genuine challenge could have arisen if one-time Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov had reacted to his sacking by declaring his candidacy for the presidential election).
The suggestion that the roads to democracy for Russia in the 1990s ran through Khasbulatov, Zyuganov and Primakov is thought-provoking. Furman’s argument is not that these men were more committed to democratisation than Yelstin. Rather, that victory by any of them would have created an opportunity for the all-important transfer of power. Part of his argument is that any of the three would have faced institutional constraints that might have arrested the anti-democratic consolidation of power that occurred under Yelstin, in spite of any anti-democratic inclinations they themselves may have held.
Instead, in the absence of a viable opposition that was both popular enough to win an election and acceptable to Yeltsin (who would ultimately have to accept his loss), Yelstin’s imitation democracy slouched inexorably toward the extreme centralisation of power in the presidency that continued under Putin and destroyed the prospects for genuine democratisation in Russia.
This is a short book, so Furman’s arguments are not developed at great length. This is by design – you get the impression that the book is supported to be a conversation starter – but the focus is not helped by the fact that Furman, like many a brilliant polymath author, cannot resist the occasional provocative aside. These are generally entertaining, but in some places they can blunt the argument by inviting you to disagree with a line of thought that is not actually central to Furman’s thesis.
For example, before starting his substantive analysis of the Yelstin years, Furman considers whether democratisation would have been possible in 1991. He discusses “cultural and psychological factors” (p. 15), such as the lack of historical experience with proto-democracy in Russia and the ‘materialism’ of post-Soviet Russian conscious. Furman’s analysis is actually quite subtle, but readers tired of shopworn Western stereotypes about the autocratic Russian character might be sceptical. This is unfortunate (particularly given this section opens the book), because it isn’t important for the key arguments of Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System. Whether or not Russia could have achieved democratisation under alternative leadership, or if the Soviet Union collapsed in a different way, is beside the point – the Yeltsin transition is the one that happened and Furman’s real focus is on the events that occurred as a result.
But that is a very minor flaw, and it has its compensations. Furman’s prose is generally entertaining and he wears his erudition refreshingly lightly, like when he notes that the Yelstin regime looked like the Lenin regime with the “signifiers” switched. This is an interesting point, but in the hands of a more self-consciously academic author would probably be the springboard to a tedious analysis of the semiotics of something-or-other. Mercifully, Furman knew how to choose the right concepts and language to make his point and move on.
Overall, the language is readily accessible to a general audience. The politics may be less so – while the translator (Ian Dreiblatt) helpfully footnotes some of the more obscure names and references, it would help to have a basic grasp of Yelstin era politics. I would recommend reading Leon Aron’s biography of Yelstin (Boris Yeltsin: a Revolutionary Life Hb) first – both because that book is excellent (both as a biography and as a broader history) and because it sets up the Yeltsin-as-democratiser case against which Furman takes aim.
Strongly recommended.
Gessen’s foreword makes the case for a full intellectual biography of a fascinating life. What it doesn’t do is make obvious why this book, which was published in Russia under a title that translates to “Spiral Motion” in 2010, was published in English in 2022. While the Russo-Ukrainian War has increased interest in Russia among English-language readers, Furman’s book is not about Russian militarism or nationalism, and isn’t even really about President Vladimir Putin. Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System focuses on political developments during the presidency of Boris Yelstin, which continued (according to Furman’s argument) into the early Putin era.
After some preliminary comments about Soviet and pre-Soviet democratic prospects, the bulk of the book considers how the favourability of political conditions for democratisation in Russia changed between 1991 and 2010. The presentation is broadly chronological during the Yeltsin years, before taking a more thematic approach after Putin assumes the presidency in 2000. The analysis is followed by a brief discussion of potential future developments (from the perspective of 2010). For the English-language edition, Tony Wood supplies an afterword that attempts to update this discussion to 2022.
If it is not clear exactly why Verso chose to publish this English edition in 2022, what is clear is that they have done English-language audiences a significant service. This is a fascinating and provocative book that deserves a wide audience among English-language readers interested in Russia.
Most observers would agree that Russia in 2024 is further from democracy than it was during the Yelstin years. The question is, how much further? This is an extremely important question for the future of democracy in Russia. If the prospects for genuine democratisation in the 1990s were good and Russia fell short due to bad luck or bad leadership, then we might hope that fortuitous changes at the end of the Putin era could put Russia back on the path to democracy. The prospects may currently seem bleak, but if a change in leadership to Putin derailed Russian democratisation, then a change from Putin could reverse this.
Furman’s analysis runs counter to this hopeful interpretation. In his view, the Putin regime (at least up until 2010) is a clear and inevitable continuation of the Yelstin model. He argues that Yelstin’s leadership never offered the prospect of genuine democratisation. His claim is not that Yelstin was a cynical demagogue – it is most likely, he suggests, that Yeltsin believed at least some of his rhetoric at least some of the time, displaying neither “deliberate mendacity [nor] deep conviction” (p. 10).
The fundamental problem was that when Yeltsin emerged as the leader of Russia from the ruins of the Soviet Union, “a movement that had appeared democratic in its postulated and subjective ideological goals nonetheless came to power through thoroughly undemocratic means.” The bitterly ironic consequence was that the “victory of the democrats meant the elimination of the vague prospects for Russia’s democratic development [in 1991]” (p. 41). Anti-democratic decisions made by Yelstin during his presidency, ostensibly to protect Russia’s fledgling democracy, then moved Russia further down its undemocratic path.
Having taken power undemocratically in the name of democracy, the only way that Yeltsin could have provided a pathway to democratisation would have been by fostering an opposition that could ultimately defeat him in a democratic transition. This was naturally a tall order, particularly given that the most likely opposition force for most of the Yelstin period was the Communist Party.
A return to Communist rule would have been unappetising for any supporter of democracy in the 1990s. Nonetheless, Furman argues that Yelstin’s victory over the Communist’s Gennady Zyuganov in the 2016 presidential election was one of three political crises in the period when the road not taken was the one that could have led to democratisation. The other two were when Yelstin faced threats from within the democrats – the 1993 standoff with the parliament under Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and the leadup to the 2000 presidential election (when Furman suggests that a genuine challenge could have arisen if one-time Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov had reacted to his sacking by declaring his candidacy for the presidential election).
The suggestion that the roads to democracy for Russia in the 1990s ran through Khasbulatov, Zyuganov and Primakov is thought-provoking. Furman’s argument is not that these men were more committed to democratisation than Yelstin. Rather, that victory by any of them would have created an opportunity for the all-important transfer of power. Part of his argument is that any of the three would have faced institutional constraints that might have arrested the anti-democratic consolidation of power that occurred under Yelstin, in spite of any anti-democratic inclinations they themselves may have held.
Instead, in the absence of a viable opposition that was both popular enough to win an election and acceptable to Yeltsin (who would ultimately have to accept his loss), Yelstin’s imitation democracy slouched inexorably toward the extreme centralisation of power in the presidency that continued under Putin and destroyed the prospects for genuine democratisation in Russia.
This is a short book, so Furman’s arguments are not developed at great length. This is by design – you get the impression that the book is supported to be a conversation starter – but the focus is not helped by the fact that Furman, like many a brilliant polymath author, cannot resist the occasional provocative aside. These are generally entertaining, but in some places they can blunt the argument by inviting you to disagree with a line of thought that is not actually central to Furman’s thesis.
For example, before starting his substantive analysis of the Yelstin years, Furman considers whether democratisation would have been possible in 1991. He discusses “cultural and psychological factors” (p. 15), such as the lack of historical experience with proto-democracy in Russia and the ‘materialism’ of post-Soviet Russian conscious. Furman’s analysis is actually quite subtle, but readers tired of shopworn Western stereotypes about the autocratic Russian character might be sceptical. This is unfortunate (particularly given this section opens the book), because it isn’t important for the key arguments of Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia's Post-Soviet Political System. Whether or not Russia could have achieved democratisation under alternative leadership, or if the Soviet Union collapsed in a different way, is beside the point – the Yeltsin transition is the one that happened and Furman’s real focus is on the events that occurred as a result.
But that is a very minor flaw, and it has its compensations. Furman’s prose is generally entertaining and he wears his erudition refreshingly lightly, like when he notes that the Yelstin regime looked like the Lenin regime with the “signifiers” switched. This is an interesting point, but in the hands of a more self-consciously academic author would probably be the springboard to a tedious analysis of the semiotics of something-or-other. Mercifully, Furman knew how to choose the right concepts and language to make his point and move on.
Overall, the language is readily accessible to a general audience. The politics may be less so – while the translator (Ian Dreiblatt) helpfully footnotes some of the more obscure names and references, it would help to have a basic grasp of Yelstin era politics. I would recommend reading Leon Aron’s biography of Yelstin (Boris Yeltsin: a Revolutionary Life Hb) first – both because that book is excellent (both as a biography and as a broader history) and because it sets up the Yeltsin-as-democratiser case against which Furman takes aim.
Strongly recommended.
February 26, 2023
Interesting argument and a good run down of Post-Soviet politics engagingly written.
March 24, 2024
come call chavez's revolution an 'imitation democracy' to my face, lib
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews