Yasin traces the origins of the “democratic revolution” of the late 1980s and early 1990s to the decision by Mikhail Gorbachev to embrace “democratization over the empire” and to Boris Yeltsin’s choice of a market economy over central planning.The revolution removed the three key obstacles to Russia’s progress: a closed, state-owned economy; a “totalitarian communist” political system; and a multinational empire, the maintenance of which required enormous expenditures and perpetuated dictatorship at home.

In its politics, economy, and social life Russia today is very much a “coat of many colors” running the gamut from bright to gray to black.

Either the Putin regime must evolve toward full-blown "classic" authoritarianism or there will a reaffirmation and renewal of the freedom of media, judicial independence, and separation of power and property.

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