State against Civil Society

This book examines the reasons for the rise and fall of the mass protests which swept through Russia between December 2011 and July 2013. After decades of passive acceptance of the status quo, it appeared that civil society was at last awakening, in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’. However, Vladimir Putin’s return to office in 2012 has quelled the rise in protests, with the government quickly regaining the upper hand. In this book, international experts in the field of Russian politics provide important new insights into the nature of the mass opposition movement (the "non-systemic opposition"), its strengths and weaknesses. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies._x005F_x000D_ Europe-Asia StudiesTHE COLLECTION OF ARTICLES EDITED AND BROUGHT TOGETHER BY Viktor Makarenko in thisbook is a good example of a collective effort by independent Russian intellectuals to foster ‘creativecandour’ (p. 500) in the Russian political sciences._x005F_x000D_ INNA CHUVYCHKINA, Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen, Germany.