This monograph discloses the estate-based social structure of contemporary Russia by way of outlining the principles of the USSR's peculiar estate system, and explaining the new social estates of post-Soviet Russia. Simon Kordonsky distinguishes and describes in particular the currently existing Russian service and support estates. He introduces the notions of a resource-based state and resource-based economy as the political and economic foundations for Russian society's estate structure. His study demonstrates, moreover, how the method of inventing and institutionalizing threats plays a...