Robert Skidelsky spent a month in Russia, playing bridge, monitoring an election, learning Russian, and observing the anxieties of ordinary citizens

Taylor E Dark spent a year teaching at a Russian university where he found a student generation politically apathetic but entrepreneurially vigorous. They even miss classes to go on business trips

Where reform has been tried in Russia, democrats thrive. Communist strength, on the other hand, follows the path of Hitler's invasion

Viktor Pelevin is one of Russia's finest comic writers. Prospect, in conjunction with Index on Censorship, publishes his account of some remarkable events at the Kremlin

The defining moment of Boris Yeltsin's career was his humiliation by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. In pursuit of revenge, Yeltsin broke up the Soviet Union. But he has remained a loner, unwilling to...

Whoever wins the election, Russia will remain an unpredictable neighbour for the west. Nato must expand eastwards but should encourage some states to become partners, not members

The late Ernest Gellner, a life-long anti-communist, deplored the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Here he explains his regrets-for those in the east who have had their moral universe shattered,...

Peter Kellner examines the reasons why the pollsters so badly underestimated the Tory vote in the 1992 election and asks whether it could happen again.

The end of the cold war has left Nato with a diminished role. Will extending Nato to central Europe help revitalise the organisation and stabilise the new democracies? Or will it unnecessarily...

Contemporary Russian literature is suffering an identity crisis. Lesley Chamberlain describes how post-Soviet writers are struggling to escape the legacy of both 20th century repression and 19th...