How can one explain the institutional trajectory of the Russian Federation from 1991 to nowadays ? We propose within the framework of this communication to highlight the new perspectives of interpretation allowed by a political sociology in the study of changes in the Russian political space following the collapse of the USSR, and more precisely in the possibilities to determine the social conditions of emergence of a new political space in Russia. Our hypothesis is that the transformations of the Russian political space, which effects extend to nowadays, result from a crisis of social reproduction within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This hypothesis is based on a three-parts demonstration. The first part will highlight the social dynamics at the principle of the political transformations. The structural gap between the education system and the system of economic production contributes to the emergence of a crisis of social reproduction in the USSR, which takes the shape of a political crisis within the CPSU. The second part will aim to explain the effects of this crisis of social reproduction on the Russian political space. According to a analysis of institutional dynamics, we will describe more precisely the institutional transformations of the Russian, i.e. the successive configurations of the Russian political space. In the third part, the analysis of all social actors (1500 individuals) of the Russian political space will confirm the general hypothesis that one consequence of a crisis of social reproduction to the CPSU is the genesis of a new political space in Russia.
