Review of H. Eckstein, F. Fleron, E. Hoffman and W. Reisinger, Can democracy take root in post-Soviet Russia? Explorations in state-society relations, (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), and B. Rubin and J. Snyder (eds), Post-Soviet political order. Conflict and state building, (Routledge, 1997), in Europe-Asia Studies, 1998, 50 (8): 1475-77