Freedom's Ordeal
The Struggle for Human Rights and Democracy in Post-Soviet States

Peter Juviler

312 pages
Cloth 1997 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3418-3 | $55.00s | £36.00 | Add to shopping cart
A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series

"This is an extremely valuable survey of the tortuous struggle for human rights in post-Soviet states. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice

"While one often hears how bad the situation in Russia is, Juviler's grand survey of it from the perspective of democratic institutions and human rights brings a wide array of facts and little-known details that give a truly illuminating picture of a country in strikingly poor condition."—Journal of Law and Society

"Informative and interesting."—Slavic Review

Fifteen countries have emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Freedom's Ordeal recounts the struggles of these newly independent nations to achieve freedom and to establish support for fundamental human rights. Although history has shown that states emerging from collapsed empires rarely achieve full democracy in their first try, Peter Juviler analyzes these successor states as crucial and not always unpromising tests of democracy's viability in postcommunist countries. Taking into account the particularly difficult legacies of Soviet communism, Freedom's Ordeal is distinguished by its careful tracing of the historical background, with special attention to human rights before, during, and after communism. Juviler suggests that the culture and practices of despotism may wither wherever modernization conflicts with tyranny and with the curtailment or denial of democratic rights and freedoms.

Peter Juviler is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Codirector of the Human Rights Center at Columbia University.

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