This article argues that the most significant problem facing Russian democratic consolidation is a lack of social capital, the values and relationships based on trust that undergird stable democracy. This lack is a direct result of policies executed in the Soviet period that were designed specifically to suppress those relationships. This represents a novel approach (there have been to date no applications of the concept of social capital to the Russian case) that is intended to move discussion about Russian democracy towards a fundamental re-examination of the social environment in which Russian democratic consolidation is occurring.
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