In Chapter 1 and 2 of The Road to Unfreedom, Snyder traces Russia’s missed democratic opportunity. During the transitional period following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and leading into the rise and consolidation of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, Snyder charts the trajectory of Russian politics, emphasizing the pivotal moments where democratic principles could have taken root but instead were systematically undermined by oligarchic and autocratic influences.

At the crux of this missed opportunity is the post-Soviet transition period of the 1990s. This era began with a promise of democracy as the Soviet Union disintegrated into multiple independent states, with Russia ostensibly poised to embrace democratic governance. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, introduced a series of reforms aimed at democratizing the nation and shifting the economy from planned socialism to market capitalism. However, as Snyder points out, these reforms were hastily implemented and poorly managed, leading to significant economic disparity and social unrest. In fact, as Snyder points out, there was never a clear democratic process, based on a principle of succession, in Russia, even during the transition period:

Democracy never took hold in Russia, in the sense that power never changed hands after freely contested elections.