Shocking Mother Russia: Democratization, Social Rights, and Pension Reform in Russia, 1990–2001. By Andrea Chandler. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 260p. $60.00.

The pension system of a given state is a mirror that reflects many dimensions of that state's political processes, political and social values, historical experience, and economic conditions. Had Andrea Chandler presented her analysis of Russian pension politics oriented toward those four categories or analogous ones, her study would have been much more understandable and would have made a greater contribution to our understanding of post–Soviet Russian politics. Instead, Chandler presents a mostly chronologically based account of Russian pension politics that makes a significant contribution to the subject but one that is harder to understand than it needs to be. The reader must tease out the important themes, such as democratization, from a book that is more chronological than thematic. Shocking Mother Russia is less than the sum of its valuable parts.