The United Nations Statistic Division identifies the western boarder of Eastern Europe as the European Union members that are of Central European and the Commonwealth of the Independent States, and the eastern border as the Pacific Coast of the Russian Far East.  These boundaries encompass Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and the Ukraine. 

In the 1980s, states that failed to achieve long-term economic growth through import substitution industrialization saw neo-liberalism as an opportunity to set their countries on the path to prosperity. As states opened their borders to foreign trade and investment, they became subordinate to the interests of corporations and transnational organization and less capable of providing their citizens with basic needs. Nations like Russia, which did not derive major benefits from market oriented reforms, are now reconsidering their development strategies. Today, Russia recognizes the potential benefits of free trade and foreign direct investment. Because of this, it has made efforts to establish good diplomatic relations with foreign governments and has implemented economic reforms in order to meet the WTO accession requirement. However, Russia is no longer blindly following the neo-liberal prescriptions that are advocated by the IMF and the WTO. Instead, it is striving to maximize the benefits of economic integration by pursuing its own development strategy. The Russian state under Vladimir Putin has begun to consolidate its power and reestablish its role as an influential player in the international economy. In order to ensure that the state retains its sovereignty and national self-determination through the process of global economic integration, the Russian government has made it a top priority to regain control of strategic domestic industries and to tighten its grip over the political and social actors in the country.

In 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall triggered a revolution across Central and Eastern Europe, bringing an end to terrorizing Communist regimes from Bonn to Bucharest and the Baltic Sea.  Hundreds of miles away in the former Czechoslovakia, students, dissidents, artists and revolutionaries stormed the streets and did not budge until the Communist government dropped its heavy sickle.  Although the so-called Velvet Revolution Protests lasted but ten days, the uprising in November was the result of nearly ten years of work dating back to the 1979 Charter 77 proclamation calling for liberalism, human rights and freedom for all.

The Russian Federation is the site of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world (WHO, 2005). While obtaining consistent and reliable figures is problematic, the AIDS Foundation East-West(2006) estimates that the total number of registered cases has risen from around 1,100 cases between 1987 and 1995 to almost 400,000 cases in 2006 (see Figure 1). Due to these alarming figures, there is a significant body of research on AIDS in Russia that is overwhelmingly dominated by a focus on Intravenous Drug Users (IDU). Such a focus is not irrational by any means since, according to UNAIDS and the WHO, intravenous drug users account for at least 87% percent of AIDS cases. Moreover, Garrett (2000) suggests that by 2015 there will be at least 23 million intravenous drug users (IDU) throughout Russia. Even more disturbing, despite the importance of IDUs in any attempt to  curb? the AIDS epidemic, only 10% of them currently receive any treatment (UNAIDS, 2005). Thus, IDUs have been, and presently are, the most worrisome risk group. However, in accordance with Packard and Epstein’s (1992) argument that a single-minded focus on sexual behavior in Africa ignores other important factors, I argue that such concentration on IDUs in Russia ignores the increasingly important roles of (the people’s/the population’s?) perceptions of sex, sexuality, and of the MSM community in Russia’s AIDS epidemic.

Dr. William Hagen is a Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He has been affiliated with the university since 1970. His research focuses on Modern and Early Modern Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as Comparative World History. In 1996, Dr. Hagen served as President for the Conference Group for Central European History at the American Historical Association. On February 20, 2007, Dr. Hagen sat down with Features Editor Aaron Saltzman to discuss the development of Eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Josephine T. Andrews is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. She received her M.A. in Politics from New York University in 1988 and earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1997. Professor Andrews has recently published a book on the failure of Russia’s first democratic legislature: When Majorities Fail: The Russian Parliament 1990-1993. Andrews has also authored numerous conference papers and publications on electoral laws, Russian politics, emerging democracies, and party ideology. On March 1st, 2007 Andrews sat down with Features staff members Olga Machkine and Lauren Dasilva to discuss the past, present, and future of Eastern European and Russian politics.