Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe was a "Baron Munchausen syndrome" - a venture similar to that of a fairytale personage who boasted to be able to lift himself up by grabbing hold of his own hair. Post-communist transition still involves social, cultural, and political engineering, since fundamentally it is a transition to modern society in the conditions of an assertive and sometimes forceful presence of ready-made Western institutional and cultural formats. Such is the challenge facing Russia in the epoch of globalisation. Russia's Road to Modernity looks at Russian social change...