On March 2, 2008, Russians will vote for their next president. Although there are four candidates, no one doubts the victory of Vladimir Putin’s designated successor, Dmitri Medvedev. The remaining contenders represent political parties best known for rubberstamping the Kremlin’s agenda (Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party and Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist...

Can a rejuvenated Republican party unify the liberal opposition to Putin?

This is not a plea for help, but a warning about what we'e going to have to deal with soon. The patience of the Russian people is wearing thin. With whom will the West side in this coming battle, the Russian people or the KGB?

Forging a united opposition strong enough to contest the Kremlin's control over the Duma in 2007 and the presidency in 2008 is particularly urgent for the future of Russian democracy.

Russia is facing a systemic crisis, and the only way out of it lies in dismantling the defining political, economic, and social features of Putinism.

For Ronald Reagan, there was no "parity," nuclear or otherwise, between America and the Soviet Union. The former was superior for one and only one reason: its people were free.

Every revolution is a surprise. Still, the latest Russian Revolution must be counted among the greatest of surprises. The failure of Western experts to anticipate the Soviet Union's collapse may in part be attributed to a sort of historical revisionism -- call it anti-anti-communism -- that tended to exaggerate the Soviet regime's stability and legitimacy.

Circumstances in Russia point to the gradual erosion of legitimacy and political institutions--or a sudden collapse of the regime, like the recent Egyptian antiauthoritarian revolt.