A political joke making the rounds of Moscow and St. Petersburg recently goes as follows: “Gorbachev led us to the edge of an abyss; but under Yeltsin we have taken a big step forward!” To many Russians today the cataclysmic events of the past several years do indeed resemble an abyss – an abyss of crime and corruption, ethnic chaos and violence, inflation, unemployment, and the collapse of the social, medical, scientific, artistic, and educational infrastructure. The initial euphoria that greeted glasnost, perestroika, and democratization has been replaced by an overwhelming sense of frustration, fear, and fatigue with politics and politicians. Under these circumstances, it is easy to be pessimistic about the chances for a successful transition to democracy and a market economy in Russia. Yet progress is being made. In late 1993 a new constitution was enacted. The gridlock between the presidency and parliament that erupted into violence in October 1993 has ended and the two centers of power are working together to draft budgets, stem inflation, enact badly needed legislation, and fight crime.

Law and lawyers are on the forefront of these reform efforts, just as they were in the 1950s and 1960s under Khrushchev. However, those reforms were cut short by Khrushchev's ouster and a return to stolid and authoritarian rule under Leonid Brezhnev. The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 created an imperative of replacing its former discredited legal and political institutions with new, more legitimate ones.