Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia’s Post-Soviet Political System by Dmitrii Furman (Author)

“Russia is an imitation culture. Throughout the country’s history it has formulated its existence using European formulas. But then unable to compete on the well-established democratic terms Russia has repeatedly positioned itself as a special civilization, in essence, what the West is not. Dmitry Furman’s book discusses one of the most important moments in russian history—transition from communism to democracy, as it were. At the time it seemed that Russia’s cycle of imitation of the West and then the resentment that it cannot or doesn’t not want to follow the rules, could finally be broken. Despite all the democratic promises it was not. Furman brilliantly and meticulously explains as why Russia constantly falls into an autocratic trap of its own making. His is a sober analysis not only of Russia’s past but also grim prospects for democracy in its future.”
—Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs, The New School, New York

Dmitri Furman’s first book, Religion and Social Conflicts in the USA, was published in the USSR in 1981. In later years he became a leading scholar of post-Soviet political development, and theorist of “imitation democracy,” publishing books on a number of former Soviet republics before his death in 2011.