Russia Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Hans B. Neumann is an assistant professor of history at Scarborough
College, University of Toronto.

Marika Pruska-Carroll, a professor of Russian and Eastern European
politics at Concordia University, summarizes in this book more than 150
taped interviews she conducted between 1991 and 1994 with Russians from
all walks of life. The interviewees—among them the infamous Vladimir
Ahirinovsky—were asked to give their impressions of the current state
of affairs in Russia. (Most of Pruska-Carroll’s subjects were drawn
from the orbit areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, so the reader
should be cautious about accepting their opinions as representative of
the country as a whole.) The picture of contemporary Russia that emerges
is not a pretty one, even when the Russian penchant for resigned
pessimism is taken into account. The author prefaces the interviews with
her own cogent impressions of Moscow and how it has changed since the
fall of the Soviet Union. Her book is essential reading for anyone with
an interest in the current Russian Zeitgeist.