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The Problem of Russian Democracy: Can Russia Rise Again?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Dmitry Shlapentokh
Affiliation:
History, Indiana University, South Bend

Extract

While Western political scientists have a variety of opinions on democracy and how its institutions could be improved, they almost never argue about the validity of democracy as a form of government. Of course, it would be unfair here to ignore the presence of an authoritarian streak in Western thought. Thomas Hobbes comes to mind most immediately. Yet the views of those thinkers with an authoritarian bent have become marginalized in present-day discourse; or, to be more precise, it is assumed that their views on the importance of a strong government are irrelevant to the present. The assumption that a strong regime might be necessary in non-Western societies is thought to be the product of these authoritarian/totalitarian societies' elite classes—that is, a justification for imposing the power of the elite upon the people. Most Western political scientists are convinced that democracy is the best of all possible forms of government.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2000

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References

1 While Foucault emphasized the coercive/disciplining nature of Western society in almost all his work, the most important of his books from this perspective is Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977)Google Scholar. Curiously enough, the title of Foucault's book echoes Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The resemblance, of course, is superficial—not only because Foucault probably did not look to Dostoyevsky for guidance (he may or may not have read him)—but because of their dramatically different messages. For Dostoyevsky, restraint and punishment comes from within, from a person's soul. For Foucault, repression and control is external, exclusively societal.

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12 There are numerous instances in the histories of China and Egypt in which breakdowns in the irrigation and economic systems followed the end of a dynasty.

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41 The French monarchists believed that they were fighting against the revolutionary government. Yet in their struggle against the revolutionary regime they actually weakened France as a state, and the revolutionaries pointed this out. Indeed, the revolutionaries emphasized that they themselves were “patriots,” fighting for a “united and indivisible” France. At the same time, they viewed their enemies as agents of foreign powers.

42 Ibid. “Pitt” refers to William Pitt, prime minister of England at the time of the French Revolution. “Koblenz” was the headquarters of the French monarchists in Germany—a symbol of the counterrevolution.

43 Ibid., 245.

44 Ibid., 246.

46 Ibid., 247.

49 Ibid., 248. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès was a prominent figure of the French Revolution.

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51 Ibid. Contemporary Russian journalists also admitted that the Bolsheviks had exploited nationalist ideology from the very beginning of their rule. See, for example, Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 12 10, 1997.Google Scholar

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