The Agony of the Russian Idea.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Paperback octavo, very good plus condition. 201 pp. Boris Yeltsin's attempts at democratic reform have plunged a long troubled Russia further into turmoil. Tim McDaniel explores the inability of all its leaders over the last two centuries - tsars and Communist rulers alike - to create the foundations of a viable modern society. The problem is rooted in a cultural trap endemic to Russian society and linked to a unique sense of destiny embodied by the Russian Idea - the belief that Russia can forge a path in the modern world that sets itself apart from the West through adherence to shared beliefs, community, and equality. When the Yeltsin government declared war on the Communist past, it broke with deeply held Russian values and traditions. McDaniel shows that in cutting people off from their pasts and promoting the West as the sole model of modernity, the reformers have simultaneously undermined the foundations of Russian morality and the people's sense of a future. Unwittingly, Yelsin annihilated its own authority.