Fairbanks, Charles. "The Feudal Analogy". Journal of Democracy, Vol.11, No.3 (2000): 34-36.

Fairbanks, Charles. "The Feudal Analogy". Journal of Democracy, Vol.11, No.3 (2000): 34-36.

• The author responds to criticism of the analogy of the contemporary Russian state to a European feudal system by Dr. Michael McFaul, saying that Dr. McFaul misses the point being made that this is not a continuity from an earlier period of Russian history, but a new phenomenon representing a significant break from both the Communist and Tsarist traditions of governances (34).
• This comparison to a 'feudal' system is from a profound confusion about the nature of states in the former Soviet Union and the complex new power relationships which have been created (34). One of these unexpected changes has been the weakness of post-Soviet states, especially striking from the strength of the Soviet State. Only the Baltic republics, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have maintained strong states (35).
• "In this quarter of the globe, the danger is not only authoritarianism but a democratic state too weak to protect individual rights, enforce the law, or conserve the public patrimony" (35).
• Most transition following the collapse of a strong state have resulting to more strong states, whether autocratic or democratic. In both cases, the infrastructure of the strong state is inherited by its successor, which uses the mechanisms of that strong state (35).
• Dr. Fairbanks asserts that the other historical examples of a strong state dissolving into a weak state is the collapse of Western Rome, which would make early European feudalism a good point of comparison (35).
• This theory is absolutely incorrect, because Western Rome certainly was not nor ever was a strong state and the transitions the author imagines do not represent an real shift in forms of governance.
• The author defends the idea of Yeltsin's Russia as sharing some characteristics with feudalism by references an, incorrect, belief that feudalism meant the combination of public interests with the private wellbeing of powerful families, meaning that the state pursued private interests (35-36).
• One of the most surprising points of transition from Soviet to post-Soviet statehood has been the dominance of private interests in the state, sometimes to the near exclusion of public interests. This is documented both by widespread and pervasive corruption at all levels, even penetrating the Russian armed forces during the late 1990s, when soldiers sold off equipment to their potential enemies (35).
• Dr. Fairbanks predicts that the corruption which surrounds the interests of powerful Russians and the interests which propelled Putin to power will ultimately come back to haunt his stakes on power as Russians become away of the hypocrisy of his regime (36).