Poetry

In any case, what followed was awful, says Kotkin. Boris Yeltsin is the villain. Under his rule, human nature reasserted itself. Without the party-state, worthy socialist people turned into thieves and swindlers. What had been idealism ended as “basest opportunism,” or the cannibalization of movable and immovable assets. Neither Yeltsin’s ex-Communist apparatchiks nor imported American advisers had a clue what should be done. They set up almost a parody of the old party structure with its Central Committee. The KGB and interior troops survive under other names. In the absence of a reliable market and banking system, assured property and other rights, life is a free-for-all. Elections and parliament amount to a Potemkin façade without the institutions and rule of law indispensable to a genuine liberal democracy. Struggling to

Probably this year’s most important self-improvement book…

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Poetry

In any case, what followed was awful, says Kotkin. Boris Yeltsin is the villain. Under his rule, human nature reasserted itself. Without the party-state, worthy socialist people turned into thieves and swindlers. What had been idealism ended as “basest opportunism,” or the cannibalization of movable and immovable assets. Neither Yeltsin’s ex-Communist apparatchiks nor imported American advisers had a clue what should be done. They set up almost a parody of the old party structure with its Central Committee. The KGB and interior troops survive under other names. In the absence of a reliable market and banking system, assured property and other rights, life is a free-for-all. Elections and parliament amount to a Potemkin façade without the institutions and rule of law indispensable to a genuine liberal democracy. Struggling to

Probably this year’s most important self-improvement book…