The fate of Russian democracy under Vladimir Putin remains highly uncertain. One clear message of this book, however, is that the Russian military is not a threat to democratization. At the end of this chapter I will take up this point more directly and will discuss some of the policy implications of my argument. Before turning to policy, however, we must return to history and political science. The three remaining tasks, then, are to summarize the evidence and my interpretation of it, to explore some theoretical issues raised by the book, and to discuss what policy implications follow from this analysis.

THE RUSSIAN MILITARY IN POLITICS

In the early Imperial period of Russian history, which starts with Peter the Great, the officer corps was heavily involved in leadership politics. Military men were responsible for the rise to power of Peter himself, Catherine the Great, Alexander I, and a slew of other monarchs in the eighteenth century. Imperial Russia had a problem with palace coups.

This pattern of praetorianism was sharply reversed in the nineteenth century. The failed Decembrist uprising of 1825 represented a key organizational lesson for the officer corps, and from this point forward the Russian army was much more cautious about becoming involved in sovereign power issues. This lesson was reinforced by civilian oversight efforts instituted by Tsar Nicholas I, and one of the mechanisms he created, secret police monitoring of the officer corps, persists to this day.