The authors:Dr. Dmitry Travin is Academic Director of the Center for Modernization Studies and Professor of Economics at the European University at St. Petersburg.Dr. Vladimir Gel'man is Professor of Political Science at the European University at St. Petersburg and Professor of Russian Politics at the University of Helsinki.Dr. Otar Marganiya is Dean of the Faculty of Economics of St. Petersburg State University and President of the Center for Modernization Studies at the European University at St. Petersburg.The author of the foreword:Dr. Vladimir Ryzhkov is a prominent Russian liberal politician and historian who was a State Duma deputy in 1993-2007.