Demokratizatsiya (journal)
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Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization is an international interdisciplinary quarterly journal devoted to changes in the late Soviet Union and post-Soviet states, issued by Heldref Publications in Washington, DC. It covers the processes in these countries since 1985.
The journal is issued since 1992, ISSN 1074-6846. Its old content is freely available online. The most recent issues are by subscription only.
The executive editors are Michael A. McFaul of Stanford University, Marshall Goldman of Harvard University, and Nikolai Zlobin of the Center for Defense Information.
Its description says:
- "Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed quarterly journal that covers the transformations in the Soviet Union since 1985 and in its successor states. The journal welcomes papers by academics, policymakers and other specialists in the areas of politics, sociology, economics, law, international relations, history and other relevant disciplines. The journal also values critiques of specific policies and programs, as well as comparisons between reforms in the new countries and elsewhere that may serve as constructive examples."
[edit] Early History
Founded by undergraduate students at American University in Washington, D.C., the journal originally published mostly policy-relevant material, though it gradually became more scholarly over the years.
Demokratizatsiya since early on reflected a more pessimistic view of the post-Soviet transitions than was the norm, publishing several articles on organized crime, corruption, the rise of illiberal ideologies such as Eurasianism (Evraziitsi), the lingering power of the KGB, misappropriated foreign aid to the region, among others. The journal was banned in Uzbekistan for a 1993 article by “C” (pseudonym) on the Islom Karimov regime.
The journal made headlines during the controversies surrounding U.S. aid to Russia’s privatization drive in the mid-1990s. The journal had published articles by some policymakers and scholars addressing this topic, which were widely cited when several scandals later appeared in the press and the U.S. government began investigations.
[edit] Editorial Bent
Demokratizatsiya was in several ways a pioneer of the Soviet and Communist studies (or Sovietology and transition studies) field, although it was associated mostly with younger and emerging maverick scholars that wanted to explore new paradigms after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Other similar journals appeared later, namely Problems of Post-Communism (which ostensibly revived the old U.S. government publication Problems of Communism, which ceased publication in 1990), and Post-Soviet Affairs (the re-named and re-oriented Soviet Economy). Demokratizatsiya’s policy bent distinguished it from other publications.
Demokratizatsiya was formed and is shaped editorially by five groups: 1) Emerging Western Sovietologists, 2) scholars from the post-Soviet states, 3) architects of reforms, 4) scholars from other fields coming in contact with the new countries, and 5) Western policymakers. However, its editorial structure and process (each article is blind peer-reviewed by two specialists) prevents the journal from being associated with one particular school of thought or ideology, unlike other publications. The journal also regularly invites outside specialists to put together special issues on specific topics. Recent ones have focused on Estonia, secret-police reform, color revolutions, Moldova, Russian civil society, Armenia, the Russian presidential elections, as well as on Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms twenty years after his ascension to power.
Numerous noted Sovietologists serve on the editorial board along with politicians from the region, including former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar, former Belarusian head of state Stanislau Shushkevich (remembered for the Belavezhskaya Pushcha Agreement that dissolved the Soviet Union in December 1991) and former Russian acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. Until their passing, so did the “godfather of perestroika” Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, Russian democracy activist and legislator Galina Starovoitova (murdered in 1998) and famed Russian investigative reporter Yuri Shchekochikhin (who died under mysterious circumstances in 2003).
The journal has had a high turnover in the executive-editor position, as the scholars involved also tend to be policymakers and change jobs frequently. Fiona Hill, for example, executive editor since 2002, recently became the Russia-area specialist at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, and took a leave from the journal and was replaced by Marshall Goldman.
Though editorially linked originally to American University and Moscow State University, Demokratizatsiya became an academically unaffiliated journal of Heldref Publications. There were talks in 1997 and 1998 with Harvard University faculty to affiliate the journal to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, but no agreement was reached.
