The authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet states emerged and consolidated in an absence of strong traditions of civil society and the fact that the anticommunist revolution of 1991 in the Soviet Union was not predated by a "revolution of values." The democratic transit in the newly independent states failed and democratic changes were suspended, among other things, because the new ruling layers that had monopolized power and property in post-Soviet states never wanted continued market and democratic reforms. In short, the authoritarian regimes, on the one hand, owe their stability to the power/property institution, the nomenklatura as the ruling stratum and the patronage state. On the other, authoritarianism in the post-Soviet space was kept within certain limits by power equilibrium between regional elites and de-nomenklaturization of the political elite while an absence of political and social actors that need democratic transformations was and remains the highest barrier on the way toward such transformations.