U.VA. EXPERT ON RUSSIA PUBLISHES FOREIGN POLICY ADVICE 
AMERICA NEEDS TO VIEW RUSSIA'S CHALLENGES SEPARATELY:
DOMESTIC GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL ROLE

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 18 -- "Does Russia have a
democratic future?"
	That is the question that Allen C. Lynch, director of the
University of Virginia's Center for Russian and East European Studies,
explores in a monograph by the same name.
	The Soviet Union collapsed suddenly in December 1991 and the
Russian Federation emerged under the leadership of President Boris
Yeltsin, leading the West to expect that the socialistic behemoth
would grow smoothly into a capitalistic democracy.
	Expectations were overly optimistic.
	In a Headline Series published by the New York-based Foreign
Policy Association, Lynch examines post-Soviet Russia's political
institutions and economy. He finds they look more like an amalgam of
contemporary Colombia, Peronist Argentina and 20th-century Brazil than
a North Atlantic democracy.
	With the rise of organized crime, a weak military and a
scientific community in disarray, Russia's main challenge is to
establish the basis for a minimally competent, functioning system of
public administration, Lynch believes.
	The concomitant challenge for American foreign policy is to
view Russia's internal evolution separately from its relations with
the outside world. American foreign policy should focus on Russia's
place in international politics, regardless of its progress toward
democracy, Lynch argues.
	Lynch is an associate professor of government and foreign
affairs at U.Va. From 1989 to 1992, he served as assistant director of
the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet
Union at Columbia University. He earned a master's of international
affairs and a doctorate in political science from Columbia. 
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                                                  November 17,  1997
	For more information, call Allen Lynch at (804) 924-3033.
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924-7550.  Visit the University of Virginia Top News site at
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