Russia's road to modernity

Communsm in Russia and Eastern Europe was a "Baron Muenchausen syndrome" - a venture similar to that of a personage of a fairy tale who boasted to be able to lift himself up by grabbing hold of his own hair. Post-communist transition still involves social, cultural and political engineering since fundamentally it is a transition to modern saciety in the conditions of an assertive and sometimes forceful presence of ready-made western institutional formats. Such is the challenge facing Russia in the epoch of globalisation.