This book demonstrates that the reforms of the 1990s led to a sharp decline in the standard of living for the average Russian urbanite, for instance in Novosibirsk. It discusses some of the difficulties and hardships experienced by scientists in Russia.

The young Russian men and women who record in these pages the hopes, fears, triumphs, and tragedies their country has undergone in recent years-altering their own lives profoundly in the process-all come from the first post-Soviet generation to achieve positions of leadership in Russia. They report on five challenges central to Russia's survival and stabilization: reshaping the state, coping with new economic rules, striving toward the rule of law, building a civil society, and preserving the national culture and educational capacity. They love their country, while understanding all too well the crippling psychological legacy of seventy years of a dictatorship that was both cunning and cruel in dispensing a plausible utopian myth and exacting extraordinary sacrifices in the name of that myth. They understand the acute sense of disorientation that overcame all generations when the USSR abruptly dissolved in 1991 and the Communist Party simultaneously lost much, if not all, of its power. As several of our authors recall, it was like waking up one morning and finding yourself a citizen of an entirely different country, meanwhile discovering that your parents were not your real parents and that you had acquired a brand new surname.

In the words of George F. Kennan, Russia remains a region where "the conflicts of outlook and persuasion" have been as violent as any seen in our century. As crisis follows crisis, Western observers find the tragic complexities and cruel paradoxes of post-totalitarian Russia no less mystifying than those they encountered during the Soviet era. Looking beyond the horizon and cutting beneath the headlines, in Remaking Russia eighteen distinguished essayists of diverse backgrounds offer original insights on the three central questions Russians are now debating among themselves: Who are we? Where are we going? How do we get there? Their perspectives will retain their long-term relevance whatever the outcome of Kremlin power struggles.

The essays in this volume assess key aspects of Soviet society and social policy under Gorbachev. It provides a survey of Soviet family problems and demographic change, economic and labour policy, the alcohol problem, nationality policy, and trends in culture and communications.

The essays in this volume assess key aspects of Soviet society and social policy under Gorbachev. It provides a survey of Soviet family problems and demographic change, economic and labour policy, the alcohol problem, nationality policy, and trends in culture and communications.