Books published by Brookings Institution

For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society.

Almost fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, the process of creating a ""Europe whole and free"" is incomplete and likely to be so for the foreseeable future.

The United States faces no greater challenge today than successfully fulfilling its new ambition of helping bring about a democratic transformation of the Middle East.

Russia's first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been simultaneously tumultuous and transformative. For most of the 1990s the Russian economy was in free fall, the legal system in absentia, and the majority of citizens engaged primarily in survival efforts.

"The importance of [the 1913] report for the world lies primarily in the light it casts on the excruciating situation prevailing today... to reveal to people of this age how much of today's problem has deep roots and how much does not. It will be easier to think of solutions when such realities are kept in mind."-George F. Kennan (from the Introduction)

During the 1990s, international democracy promotion efforts led to the establishment of numerous regimes that cannot be easily classified as either authoritarian or democratic.

The conflict in Chechnya, going through its low- and high-intensity phases, has been doggedly accompanying Russia's development. In the last decade, the Chechen war was widely covered, both in Russia and in the West.