Chapter 8: The Russian Federation

Boris Yeltsin

________ famously spoke on top of a tank immobilized by the protesters, urging the military not to accept this unconstitutional action and calling for a national strike until the coup ended.

Winston Churchill

________ famously characterized the military buildup along the border between democratic and communist countries as an Iron Curtain, which had descended across Europe, dividing the East from the West.

Boris Berezovsky

________ was a media tycoon who owned Russias most watched TV networks, and used his networks to help Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Mikhail Khordorkovsky

________ was once Russias richest man, worth over $ 15 billion, but used his money to fund opposition parties in the 2003 Duma elections and criticized the "managed elections "and corruption under Putin.

Russia

________ has a central government and eighty- five "federal subjects "that govern regionally.

Yeltsin

________ used shock treatment to rapidly turn Russia into a market economy.

Gulag forced labor camps

The ________ were greatly reduced in size, and eventually disbanded in 1960.

St Petersburg

Putin ordered the Court to move from Moscow to ________ in 2007 amid rumors of a clash with the Court, a move many judges called "logistical nightmares ..

Federation Council

The ________ has 170 members, two from each of Russia's 85 regions.

Liberal democratic

________ parties in Russia frequently breakup and regroup because they struggle to organize and communicate their message against Putin and the state.

Chechnya

________ has long fought for independence from Russia, resulting in two wars in the 1990s and terrorist acts against Russia in 2002 (the capture of a Moscow theater) and 2004.

majority system

In a two- ballot ________, Russians directly elect the president for six years (previously four years)

key source of authority

The Soviet military enforced control over difficult areas and was a(n) ________ and credibility.

1993

The ________ Constitution created Russia as a federal system to give local governments geographic autonomy to meet the different demands and policy preferences of their populations.

ethnic minority

Federalism was established as the solution to the diverse needs and interests of the many disparate ________ groups across the massive territory of the country, but the last decade or so has seen the erosion of federalism as local levels of government lose more and more power to the central national level.

time zones

It spans across eight ________, and borders fourteen states, with neighbors as diverse as Finland and Norway in the west, to China and North Korea in the east.

Stalin

________ labeled the wealthy peasant landowners as kulaks, and carried out a program to seize their property under state control known as ­collectivization.

Glasnost

________: Rather than continuing to attempt suppression of bad news of the Russian economy and dysfunction of its political institutions, Gorbachev allowed ________, or "openness "of the sharing and discussion of information as a limited form of free speech.

2000

Creation of federal super- districts: In ________, responding to terrorist attacks believed to have originated in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Putin created seven Super- Districts.

Soviet Union

Pravda, the state newspaper, was the only media allowed in the ________.

Beslan

After Chechen terrorists took a school hostage in ________, North Ossetia, a Russian federal subject, in 2004, Putin signed a law giving the president the power to dismiss regional governors and later canceled governor elections and gave the president the power to appoint each regional governor with the consent of the regional legislature.

Comparative Politics

In ________, illiberal democracy was coined to describe Russia's manipulated elections and others (or possibly transitional democracy)

Soviet courts

The ________ were political arms of the Communist Party and did not follow the rule of law.

USSR

On December 26, 1991, Gorbachev and Soviet officials announced the formal collapse of the ________ because they no longer had a "unity "to lead and Boris Yeltsin was increasingly controlling Russian politics.

prime minister

Appointment of the ________ and the cabinet: The president may appoint a(n) ________ with the consent of a majority of the Duma.

Russian Constitution

The ________ allows them to approve the budget, pass measures with the president's signature, and confirm or reject the prime minister.

Siloviki

________ is a Russian term for people who worked in the security services such as the KGB (Russias Soviet spy service) or its modern day successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), agencies that Vladimir Putin worked for during his early career.

City Russians

________ have a little higher level of living, are more educated, and are more likely to favor Western ideas that contradict the present president's democracy control.

Leonid Brezhnev

________** (1964- 1982), who articulated and exercised the Brezhnev Doctrine of Soviet military intervention in any country where communist rule was threatened.

Shock therapy

________ left most Russians damaged, as poverty rose to 10 times pre- Soviet- collapse levels and inflation and unemployment hit them more than the Great Depression.

Navalny

________ has been imprisoned multiple times for various white- collar offenses, generally within days of spearheading rallies against Putin and United Russia, and he has served time in prison and home arrest.

Asymmetric federalism

________, as opposed to the typical symmetrical federal system, in which all lower- level regional governments are given consistent, similar, constitutionally defined powers generally equal to one another.

Russias Federal Assembly

________ is a bicameral legislature with a lower house (the Duma) and an upper house (the Federation Council), and each possesses distinct character traits and functions.

Illiberal democracies

________ aren't democracies because those in power can use the state to protect their authority, thus voters can't hold a government accountable or vote it out.

Democratization

________: Gorbachev attempted to preserve the existing Communist Party structure while incorporating limited democracy through the creation of a directly elected Congress of Peoples Deputies, who would also be empowered to choose a president of the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev

________ revealed the existence of Lenins letter that criticized Stalin, and this began a program of de- Stalinization of the party.

objective of industrialization

The ________ was expressed in the Five- Year Plan, setting ambitious goals for production of modern industrial necessities, including steel, oil, and electricity.

Russian government

The ________ indirectly censors and controls what is aired and printed.

Catherine the Great

________**** (1762- 1796) held similar goals for westernization, drawing inspiration from ideas about science, philosophy, and religious toleration from Enlightenment thinkers of the west.

Russians

________ are 74 % urban and 26 % rural.

Ukraine

________ uses Russian natural gas to heat homes during harsh winters.

Mikhail Gorbachev

________, General Secretary from 1985 to 1991, promised reforms to save the communist economy from certain disaster through a three- pronged program.

class system

The 1917 Revolution replaced the ________ with a Marxist classless society.

CPRF

Like the ________, it has little trouble qualifying candidates for the ballot or voicing opposing views, but it performs poorly in elections, with Zhirinovsky never topping 10 % in his six presidential attempts.

Federation council reform

________: The 1993 Constitution created the Federation Council as an upper house to represent the interests of local governments.

Nikita Khrushchev

________ rode a reformist wave within the party to win the power struggle after Stalins death, and he delivered the now famous secret speech to the assembled Communist Party leadership, in which he decried Stalins program of personality cult and rule by totalitarian fear.

Legislative powers

________: The president may draft bills and submit them to the legislature for their consideration, and he may sign or veto any bills passed by both houses.

Marx

________ decries the capitalist economic system and private property as an exploitative system that effectively steals the efforts and labor of the working class (called the proletariat by ________) to create wealth for the property- owning classes (called the bourgeoisie by ________)

Joseph Stalin

________ emerged from the partys internal power struggle to rule over Russia as Lenins successor from 1922 to1953.

Communist Party class system

The ________ was at least oblivious to social background, allowing people from the bottom to rise.

The diversity within Russia and surrounding Russia has created another crucial element of Russias political culture

statism

Glasnost

Rather than continuing to attempt suppression of bad news of the Russian economy and dysfunction of its political institutions, Gorbachev allowed glasnost, or "openness" of the sharing and discussion of information as a limited form of free speech

Perestroika

Perestroika was a program of limited market reform to try and bring modern economic practices to Russia

Democratization

Gorbachev attempted to preserve the existing Communist Party structure while incorporating limited democracy through the creation of a directly elected Congress of Peoples Deputies, who would also be empowered to choose a president of the Soviet Union

Creation of federal super-districts

In 2000, responding to terrorist attacks believed to have originated in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Putin created seven Super-Districts

Power to remove governors

The 1993 Constitution gave voters the power to directly elect their own governors in their local region, but the Constitution was amended to allow the president the power to remove a governor if that governor would not conform local law to the Constitution (or perhaps the presidents interpretation of the Constitution)

Power to appoint governors

Another change was made in 2004 to end direct election of governors altogether

Federation council reform

The 1993 Constitution created the Federation Council as an upper house to represent the interests of local governments

Managed elections

The 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections all exhibited signs of the state heavily influencing the outcome, if not fully "rigging" the election, through fraud or sham ballot counts

State duma election reform

In 2005, the law changed State Duma elections from a partially single-member-district (SMD) and partially proportional representation (PR) system to a fully PR system, and raised the PR threshold to win representation from 5 percent to 7 percent

Extending the presidential term

The 1993 Constitution called for a president to serve no more than two consecutive four-year terms

Appointment of the prime minister and the cabinet

The president may appoint a prime minister with the consent of a majority of the Duma

Legislative powers

The president may draft bills and submit them to the legislature for their consideration, and he may sign or veto any bills passed by both houses

Issuing decrees with the force of law

The president controls the policies of the state through decrees issued to cabinet ministers, which act as the law of the land

Suspension of local laws

The president may suspend a law or regulation in one of Russias regional governments if he believes it is contrary to the Russian Constitution, laws or treaties of the Russian Federation, or a violation of human rights

Pardons and reprieves

The president may grant a pardon or a reprieve for any person under federal law

Foreign policy

The president is empowered as Russias chief voice in foreign affairs

Russia

is a federal state, whose constitution specifies six categorizations of eighty three different local governments united together under one national federation, with three supreme branches of government.

Federalism

was established as the solution to the diverse needs and interests of the many disparate ethnic minority groups across the massive territory of the country, but the last decade or so has seen the erosion of federalism as local levels of government lose more and more power to the central national level.

STATISM

The diversity within Russia and surrounding Russia has created another crucial element of Russia’s political culture

Mongol invasions of Russia

established a cooperative nobility, but under Ivan III (Ivan the Great), 1462–1505, and Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), 1547–1584, Russia secured its independence and laid the foundation for the modern Russian state.

Tsars of Russia

were initially princes over Moscow, established under Mongolian rule, but after Ivan III, the tsars began a long tradition of strong, authoritarian, autocratic rule.

Catherine the Great

(1762–1796) held similar goals for westernization, drawing inspiration from ideas about science, philosophy, and religious toleration from Enlightenment thinkers of the west.

Japan

had modernized under a Western model, however, and built a world

Tsar Nicholas II

capitulated by creating the Duma, an elected national representative assembly, to move Russia onto a path of constitutional monarchy.

Marxism

is a political and economic ideology framed by Karl Marx in his nineteenth

Vladimir Lenin

who had written a pamphlet in 1905 after the Russo–Japanese War entitled What Is To Be Done, in which he advocated the creation and support of a small, elite revolutionary leadership of professional intellectuals who could guide the workers in pursuit of revolutionary success.

democratic centralism

the idea that a small and elite central leadership would be entrusted with power and decision

New Economic Policy (NEP)

gave peasant farmers private property ownership of their land, in addition to rights to earn profits on sales of their produce.

Joseph Stalin

emerged from the party’s internal power struggle to rule over Russia as Lenin’s successor from 1922 to1953.

collective farms

owned by the state would serve the purpose of feeding the cities, whose workers were doing what Stalin perceived to be the most important work of turning Russia from a backward agrarian nation into a modern industrial power.

Cold War

In foreign policy, Stalin’s agenda was characterized by the outbreak of hostility between Russia and the West after their cooperation in World War II.

Iron Curtain

which had descended across Europe, dividing the East from the West.

Nikita Khrushchev

rode a reformist wave within the party to win the power struggle after Stalin’s death

Gulag

forced labor camps were greatly reduced in size, and eventually disbanded in 1960.

Leonid Brezhnev

who articulated and exercised the Brezhnev Doctrine of Soviet military intervention in any country where communist rule was threatened.

Mikhail Gorbachev

General Secretary from 1985 to 1991, promised reforms to save the communist economy from certain disaster through a three

Glasnost

Rather than continuing to attempt suppression of bad news of the Russian economy and dysfunction of its political institutions, Gorbachev allowed glasnost, or “openness” of the sharing and discussion of information as a limited form of free speech.

Perestroika

was a program of limited market reform to try and bring modern economic practices to Russia

Democratization

Gorbachev attempted to preserve the existing Communist Party structure while incorporating limited democracy through the creation of a directly elected Congress of People’s Deputies, who would also be empowered to choose a president of the Soviet Union.

Russian Constitution of 1993

which created a three branch government, featuring a directly elected and powerful president as chief executive, a bicameral legislature with a directly elected lower house called the Duma, and a Constitutional Court empowered with judicial review and constitutional interpretation.

Asymmetric federalism

as opposed to the typical symmetrical federal system, in which all lower

Creation of federal super-districts

In 2000, responding to terrorist attacks believed to have originated in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Putin created seven Super-Districts.

Power to remove governors

The 1993 Constitution gave voters the power to directly elect their own governors in their local region, but the Constitution was amended to allow the president the power to remove a governor if that governor would not conform local law to the Constitution (or perhaps the president’s interpretation of the Constitution).

Power to appoint governors

Another change was made in 2004 to end direct election of governors altogether.

Federation council reform

The 1993 Constitution created the Federation Council as an upper house to represent the interests of local governments.

Managed elections

The 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections all exhibited signs of the state heavily influencing the outcome, if not fully “rigging” the election, through fraud or sham ballot counts.

State duma election reform

In 2005, the law changed State Duma elections from a partially single-member-district (SMD) and partially proportional representation (PR) system to a fully PR system, and raised the PR threshold to win representation from 5 percent to 7 percent.

Extending the presidential term

The 1993 Constitution called for a president to serve no more than two consecutive four-year terms.

Chechnya

has long fought for independence from Russia, resulting in two wars in the 1990s and terrorist acts against Russia in 2002 (the capture of a Moscow theater) and 2004. (the occupation of a school in Beslan, South Ossetia).