There is perhaps no more challenging phenomenon in today’s political world than the transition from Soviet to Russian society. Politically relevant variables that can be ignored in more stable politics have been manipulated by history, revealing the importance of underlying political culture to political institutions and processes. The Russian Transformation explains the difficulties in this process from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining sociological and political-psychological analyses of the Russian political transition since 1985. The volume also examines the barriers and problems that societies might expect when undertaking fundamental changes in their polities.