Anatoly Kulik and Susanna Pshizova have compiled an engaging and comprehensive, cross-national study that explores the stormy political developments in the post-Soviet countries. They gathered essays regarding the formation of the various new democratic institutions of Russia, the Baltic States, the Slavic States, and Moldova. The contributors are all distinguished scholars indigenous to their areas of focus; consequently, they are able to provide a true insider's perspective of the political climates of their respective lands. Kulik and Pshizova have organized the studies into seven generously detailed, nation-specific chapters that permit readers to see the individual party systems in both their sub-regional contexts as well as in their national ones.

The Newly Independent States that appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union faced the necessity of creating their own democratic political systems in the first months of independence. While each state had the same basic task and came out of roughly the same background, each country implemented its own methods of government rule: they each pursued different paths with different outcomes. It is logical to view and study the states as a group, but also necessary to see them as individual governments with individual policies and political cultures.

Anatoly Kulik is Senior Researcher at the Political Science Department, Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of Russian Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the Moscow State University and the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Susanna Pshizova is Associate Professor at School of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University.