1 Russia: the challenges of transformation Dutkiewicz, Piotr and Trenin, Dmitri, (eds.) NYU Press, New York, USA Foreward by Craig Calhoun For seventy years Western policy-makers and social scientists obsessed anxiously over the Soviet threat. For twenty years after the collapse of the USSR they have underestimated the importance of Russia. It is time to move past both exaggerated anxiety and relative neglect. Likewise, since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian intellectuals themselves have vacillated between overstated assertions of the country’s power and importance and insecure catalogs of unfavorable international comparisons highlighting its weaknesses and problems. Again, understanding Russia today demands moving beyond these misleading extremes. And understanding Russia is crucial to understanding what sorts of futures are open on a global scale. Russia is a major power. Its territory and its natural resources are huge. Though its military was disrupted and damaged during the post-communist transition – not least as equipment was stolen and sold abroad - it remains a nuclear power. After a wrenching transformation from communism to capitalism, Russia’s economy is extremely uneven; massive profits haven’t translated into either widespread economic opportunity or enough investment in new technology and other long-term sources of growth. But the Russian economy is nonetheless one of the world’s largest – and larger in purchasing power parity than nominal values would suggest. It has great growth potential. The Russian state is beleaguered by its own transitional problems but has achieved considerable stability. Some leaders call for modernization and others for a new nationalism but there is little doubt that most share a commitment to economic development led by a strong state. Russia still faces enormous challenges in achieving stable economic growth, in delivering social services, in maintaining security throughout an ethnically diverse and far-flung territory. But how Russia faces these challenges is not just a local question, it is a question of global significance. This makes the current book both timely and important. In it, a group of leading Russian intellectuals and social scientists join with front-rank researchers from around the world to examine processes of social, political, and economic transformation in Russia. Some of these processes are pursued as an active project, often under the label of “modernization”. This is sometimes articulated as a more scientific and internationally- oriented counterpart to nationalism. The two are not sharply opposed, however, and the authors here show how political challenges and ambitions interact with agendas for institutional reform and economic growth. At the same time, the chapters make clear that neither politics nor economics alone holds the key to Russia’s future, since questions of social inequality and participation and more generally of social reproduction will also be decisive. Part of the contribution of the book is, indeed, to show how these three dimensions are inextricably interconnected.