Despite the common perception of Russia as a lawless place where an all-powerful president can do what he likes, or one with corrupt law enforcement and courts that are deeply mistrusted by citizens, Russia is indeed a country of laws. It is governed by a constitution and by laws passed through a bicameral legislature and signed by the president. Courts decide cases, criminal defendants are prosecuted, and businesses and individuals can sue one another when relationships go sour or damages have been done. Legal actors are acutely aware of what the laws say and how they are written and are careful to rely on the text of the law when making decisions. Behind the formal institutions of law, however, also lie informal practices. We often refer to this as the difference between the “law on the books” and the “law in action.” How law operates and is implemented, in other words, often matters more than how the law is written. This chapter will introduce both the formal and informal aspects of law in today’s Russia. These two aspects of the law combine to produce a system that is dualistic. It is both politicized – used to repress opposition and dissent – and ordinary – serving the needs of the average citizen – at the same time. The chapter will also demonstrate the importance of law and the legal system in the consolidation of President Vladimir Putin’s power.

The interpreters in Chapters 1 to 4 are written in C, which has much to recommend it: C is relatively small and simple; it is widely known and widely supported; its perspicuous cost model makes it is easy to discover what is happening at the machine level; and it provides pointer arithmetic, which makes it a fine language in which to write a garbage collector. But for implementing more complicated or ambitious languages, C is less than ideal. In this and succeeding chapters, I therefore present interpreters written in the functional language Standard ML.

Most engineering systems can be described, with the aid of the laws of physics and observations, in terms of algebraic, differential, and integral equations. In most problems of practical interest, these equations cannot be solved exactly, mostly because of irregular domains on which the equations are posed, variable coefficients in the equations, complicated boundary conditions, and the presence of nonlinearities. Approximate representation of differential and integral equations to obtain algebraic relations among quantities that characterize the system and implementation of the steps to obtain algebraic equations and their solution using computers constitute a numerical method.

Typed Impcore and Typed ρScheme represent two extremes. Typed Impcore is easy to program in and easy to write a type checker for, but because it is monomorphic, it cannot accept polymorphic functions, and it can accommodate new type constructors and polymorphic operations only if its syntax and type checker are extended. Typed μScheme is also easy to write a type checker for, and as a polymorphic language, it can accept polymorphic functions, and it can accommodate new type constructors and polymorphic functions with no change to its syntax or its type checker. But Typed μScheme is difficult to program in: as Milner observed, supplying a type parameter at every use of every polymorphic value soon becomes intolerable. To combine the expressive power of polymorphism with great ease of programming, this chapter presents a third point in the design space: nano-ML. Nano-ML is expressive, easy to extend, and also easy to program in. This ease of use is delivered by a new typing algorithm: instead of type checking, nano-ML uses type inference.

From Gorbachev through Yeltsin to Putin, Russia’s media landscape has undergone profound change since the late 1980s. The centralized Soviet system of propaganda collapsed, to be replaced by freewheeling broadcast media that were not fully independent of the oligarchs who owned or controlled them. Vladimir Putin brought these media under his control after assuming the presidency in 2000, but for some time he was content to let information circulate in other arenas. That changed with his return to the presidency in 2012. Since then, and especially since widespread protests in 2011 and 2012, state control of the media has been consolidated and extended in various directions, most especially online. Under Putin, new media have emerged, but they too have been subjected to various sanctions and restrictions. The Russian state has for now perfected its control of the media, with uncertain consequences for the stability of Putin’s rule.

presents applicative programming in μScheme. But μScheme doesn’t just support applicative programming; it also supports the procedural programming style described in . In particular, it provides while, set, and begin. In the procedural style, while and if account for most control flow. But loops typically also use such control operators as break, continue, and return.

Inequality in Russia skyrocketed in the 1990s. The wealthiest businesspeople became oligarchs while average Russians struggled to cover the cost of their basic needs. In this chapter, we examine the rise of inequality in postcommunist Russia, and the role that social services – like healthcare, education, and pensions – played in socioeconomic wellbeing. This chapter details the evolution of inequality and public opinion about economic issues. We show that, with increasing inequality, the provision of social services and other public goods suffered due to the government’s lack of capacity and finances. In the 2000s, Putin ushered in a period of rising oil prices and better economic performance. Inequality has decreased to some degree in recent decades, and the provision of social services has dramatically improved since the early 2000s. After the 2009 financial crisis, a renewed period of stagnation began, and a number of protracted problems in the provision of public goods persist. We discuss some social policy promises that have been unfulfilled in the lead-up to Putin’s fourth election in 2018, and the consistently low level of spending on social services. These unfilled promises matter because they affect everyday realities for many Russian citizens and raise the question whether economic inequality and poor public services may influence regime stability in Russia in the long run. Survey research suggests, though, that poor economic conditions and lacking social services have so far frustrated, but only rarely enraged the Russian public and are unlikely to undermine support for the regime on their own. Whether socioeconomic factors contribute to stability or fragility in Russia today depends on how these issues are utilized by the political opposition.

Environmental politics offers a useful entry point to evaluate the stability and fragility of Russia’s post-Soviet political and economic regime. The politics of the environment in Russia intersects and interacts with a range of other issues – the state’s capacity to enforce its laws; democracy and the ability of citizens to participate in politics; sources of economic growth and the regulation of the economy; inequality; and the diverse cultures of Russia’s multinational society. Russia boasts tremendous ecological diversity and significant protected natural areas, but also faces a number of environmental challenges, not least of which are the effects of climate change. In the post-Soviet period, in an effort to recover from the instabilities of the 1990s, the Putin government developed an economic model based on natural resource exploitation and an increasingly authoritarian form of governance, justifying this system as a means of achieving prosperity and economic security for citizens. Today we see that Russia has strong environmental laws that are not always well enforced. Russians express a high level of concern about environmental issues, but the political climate is increasingly hostile to activism. Russia is also making a big bet on the Arctic region where natural resource extraction is expected to bolster Russia’s future economic prospects and status as a great power, even as climate change and source of environmental degradation threaten Arctic inhabitants, wildlife, and ecosystems.

Does Russia’s working class form a pillar of popular support for the Putin regime? Or are workers and their communities struggling with stagnating standards of living, so that their social and economic concerns might become demands for political change? There is ample evidence to support both views. This chapter will attempt to reconcile those contradictory views regarding labor in Russian politics and society. In doing so, it will point to a substantial dilemma for Russia’s leadership. Seeking to rejuvenate Russia’s slow-growth economy will almost certainly entail hardship for Russia’s workers, which could lead to social protest and political instability. Yet failing to rejuvenate the economy will likely result in prolonged stagnation, which could also lead to protest and instability.

General equations describing transport of momenta and energy by advection–diffusion was given in Chapter 2 (see, also, Example 4.2.3) and will not be repeated here. It is important to note that the entire finite volume formulation is based on local one-dimensional representation in each coordinate direction. The flux crossing a control volume surface is represented using a one-dimensional formulation.

This book is about programming languages—and also about programming. Eachof these things is made better by the other. If you program but you don’t know about programming languages, your code may be longer, uglier, less robust, and harder to debug than it could be. If you know about programming languages but you don’t program, what is your knowledge for? To know a language is good, but to use it well is better.

The dynamics of center–region relations in Russia established by Vladimir Putin over the past two decades are at the heart of both the strength and the fragility of Russia’s authoritarian regime today. This chapter provides a history of changing relations between the federal center, the Kremlin, and Russia’s diverse subnational territories and highlights a central tradeoff that characterizes this relationship. The federal government has to balance two competing imperatives in its relationship to the regions and decide between a higher level of political control on the one hand, and more responsiveness to local needs on the other. The chapter consists of four sections. The first section considers Soviet legacies and political events that characterized Russia’s transition from the Soviet Union. The second looks at Yeltsin’s presidency, which was characterized by empowerment of Russian subnational units and the promises of federalism and democracy, but also extreme weakness of the federal state and threats to Russian statehood. The third section focuses on recentralization dynamics that characterized center–region relations under Putin during his first two terms as a president. The final section considers increasing powers gained by the president in recent years vis-à-vis the regions against the background of persistent issues of regional governance that the regime has been unable to solve. The chapter demonstrates that centralization reforms both strengthened Putin’s regime by establishing a system of control over regional actors and failed to build in the flexibility and responsiveness needed to address local needs.

Institutions that protect property rights, enforce contracts, and resolve business disputes are essential for a market economy to function smoothly. These institutions may be formal or informal, ranging from courts to the reputation of prospective business partners. But in the chaotic transformation from Soviet-era economic planning to a market economy, firms in Russia came to utilize far more extreme strategies for securing property, including services provided by organized crime and corrupt public officials. This chapter traces the evolution of Russian firms’ strategies for protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and resolving business disputes from the early days following the Soviet Union’s collapse through the contemporary Putin era. The focus is on “everyday” Russian firms, rather than on oligarchs, state-owned enterprises, or conglomerates in the natural resource sector. We will see that a central challenge of Russia’s post-Soviet transformation has been to forge state institutions strong enough to prevent chaos and coercion by criminals yet also constrained enough to curtail predation by powerful state officials.