Twenty-five years after Gorbachev came to power and two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the questions that were behind the reform efforts at the start of Perestroika are still relevant: how to modernise the economy, and how to recreate a basis for political legitimacy? The wave of 'Colour Revolutions' that precipitated regime change in Eastern Europe, starting in Serbia, and later in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, were carried out in the name of democratic legitimacy, and in order to fight corruption. The current debate in Moscow under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev revolves around the same idea: what is the way forward for Russia's modernisation, economically and politically? This volume brings together six experts on East Europe and the former Soviet Union to compare and evaluate the evolution of ideas behind Gorbachev's reforms, Yeltsin's transition, and the more recent wave of the Colour Revolutions. It does not propose a coherent regard to these historic events, but rather dispersed discussion from various perspectives tracing the contradictory development of ideas of reform, the transformation of the notion of revolution, on the role of civil society, and individual chapters from the four cases of Colour Revolutions. Contributors: Catherine Samary, Jean-Arnault Derens, Ghia Nodia, Dominique Arel, Anara Tabyshalieva.

'In this engaging volume, an international team of experts skillfully dissects the achievements and failures of the coloured revolutions - a series of popular uprisings that swept through post-socialist societies from 2000 to 2005. In doing so, they raise deeper questions about the conditions under which revolutionary change translates into revolutionary results.' -- Mark R. Beissinger, Professor of Politics, Princeton University, and author of Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State
'This is not the first book about the 'coloured revolutions', but this sets a new standard. The analysis is considered, the country chapters are by acknowledged experts, the focus is on the actors themselves and the process of change in which they engaged. I will be bringing this study to the attention of my students and all specialists on the contemporary politics of the post-Soviet world would do well to read it.' -- Stephen White, Professor of Politics, Glasgow University and author of Understanding Russian Politics

Vicken Cheterian is director of CIMERA in Geneva and author of War and Peace in the Caucasus, published by Hurst in 2009.