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A basic task of the state is to ensure the continuation and security of the community within which it is found. In an attempt to achieve this, state elites pursue long-term strategies. Such strategies involve not just questions of external security, but also the structuring of domestic society with an eye to faciliting the extraction and mobilisation of resources. The tsarist state sought to achieve this through a cooptive strategy which left some room for independent economic initiative. The soviet elite sought to encapsulate all actors into a single command stucture, thereby removing all scope for independent activity. Ultimately both strategies failed, and the post-Soviet leaders are faced with the problem of devising a more successful alternative.

During the Soviet period, political symbolism developed into a coherent narrative that underpinned Soviet political development. Following the collapse of the Soviet regime and its widespread rejection by the Russian people, a new form of narrative was needed, one which both explained the state of existing society and gave a sense of its direction. By examining the imagery contained in presidential addresses, the political system, the public sphere and the urban development of Moscow, Graeme Gill shows how no single coherent symbolic programme has emerged to replace that of the Soviet period. Laying particular emphasis on the Soviet legacy, and especially on the figure of Stalin, Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia explains why it has been so difficult to generate a new set of symbols which could constitute a coherent narrative for the new Russia.

One of the principal challenges facing political science is understanding and explaining the changes occurring in the Soviet Union/Russia after 1985. This article argues that two concepts taken from the transition to democracy literature, liberalization and democratization, are useful for understanding the dynamics of change in this region. It argues that a policy of liberalization stimulated a process of liberalization, which in turn generated a process of democratization. However, this has not been carried through to its conclusion because of the circumstances prevailing within the political elite and because of the weakness of mass forces favouring a full‐blooded process of democratization.

Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics analyses the way in which Soviet symbolism and ritual changed from the regime's birth in 1917 to its fall in 1991. Graeme Gill focuses on the symbolism in party policy and leaders' speeches, artwork and political posters, and urban redevelopment, and on ritual in the political system. He shows how this symbolism and ritual were worked into a dominant metanarrative which underpinned Soviet political development. Gill also shows how, in each of these spheres, the images changed both over the life of the regime and during particular stages: the Leninist era metanarrative differed from that of the Stalin period, which differed from that of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, which was, in turn, changed significantly under Gorbachev. In charting this development, the book lays bare the dynamics of the Soviet regime and a major reason for its fall.

A mature socialism? Stalin's death removed the charismatic principal of what had become the keystone of the Soviet metanarrative and that which had mediated the diverse strands of Soviet symbolism, and thereby given them a degree of coherence. With him gone, it was not clear how the tensions between these symbolic elements of the metanarrative could be resolved. One potential answer was to treat Stalin the way Lenin initially had been treated, viz. to emphasise his writings and his actions as the indelible guide to the future against which all must be measured. But this approach was eschewed from the outset. Although Stalin was buried with full pomp and ceremony in what became the Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum on Red Square, in the days after his death there was a dramatic shift away from the imagery of the vozhd; his picture, his words, and references to him were no longer everywhere in the Soviet public sphere, as they had been during his life. The charismatic legitimation that formerly had been vested in the figure of the vozhd was now the subject of an attempt to shift it onto the party. This was reflected in the announcement of Stalin's death, which declared that the ‘peoples of our country unite even more closely in our great fraternal family, under the tested leadership of the Communist Party created and fostered by Lenin and Stalin.’ It also referred to ‘the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin’.

One of the enduring questions of political science has been that of legitimation, of what gives a regime authority, or the right to rule in the eyes of its subjects. Most discussions of this question begin from Max Weber and his three ideal types — traditional, legal-rational and charismatic1 — but they often go beyond this typology and generate other categories of legitimation; procedural, electoral, nationalist, theocratic, and social eudaemonic are some of the modes of legitimation that scholars have at times identified when discussing communist systems.2 This question was particularly sharp during the life of the communist states because these regimes claimed a broadly-based popular legitimacy which did not sit easily with the overwhelming and largely unlimited power that they seemed to exercise. The meaninglessness of Soviet elections in terms of the fact that they were not mechanisms for holding governments accountable seemed to call into question the whole notion of popular legitimation.

Integrated pest control on chrysanthemum is now a possibility. Verticillium lecanii (Zimm.) Viegas is one of the key components as, under the right conditions, it will provide good control of pests such as aphids, thrips and whitefly. High humidity for a number of nights per week is critical for reliable pest control with this fungal pathogen. These conditions can be easily and safely obtained by fogging water over the crop at night. Four consecutive nights of high humidity per week or a cycle of two nights of high humidity and two nights ambient have given excellent pest control with no adverse effect to the crop

The Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 ushered into existence a new type of political system very different from any which had preceded it. The innovative thing about this new system was the place that the ruling Communist Party occupied in it.1 The party was dominant in the system. Its branches were found in all organizations in the USSR, its members were meant to exercise leading and guiding authority in all of those organizations, and throughout the society in general, and its leadership made all of the most important decisions for the Soviet state. It was clearly the most influential institutional body in the Soviet system. But throughout its life as the ruling institution of the Soviet Union, the party suffered from a basic tension within the rules, norms and procedures that were designed to structure the way the party worked.

Introduction: Power and the Russian Regions G.Gill Russia's Ethnofederalism: Under-Institutionalized, Not Self-Sustaining A.Heinemann-Gruder Federalism and Defederalization in a Country in Transition: The Russian Experience O.Oracheva Collaborative or Hegemonic? Tatarstan and Conflicting Visions of Federalism in Putin's Russia D.Cashaback Not So Different After All? Centre-Region Relations: A Ukrainian Perspective K.Zimmer The Influence of Russian Big Business on Regional Power: Models and Political Consequences R.Turovsky Economic Actors in Russian Regional Politics: The Example of the Oil Industry J.Kusznir Russia's Northern Periphery in Transition: Regional Fragmentation of the Far North D.Goler Conclusion: Democratization and Regional Politics G.Gill

The course of politics in the Russian regions will continue to be shaped by the development of those two factors which have been so central up until now, the relationship with the centre mediated in part through the federal structure, and the disposition of power at the local and regional levels. Any attempt to look at the possible future course of politics in the regions, including the prospects for democratization, must therefore consider these two issues.