Description
Book SynopsisSince Tsarist times, Russia’s leaders, rather than pursue economic growth for its own sake, have sought control over economic activity as a means to manage their own support base, respond to perceived security threats and to facilitate their wider geopolitical ambitions. Balancing the needs of an authoritarian state with the tentative and inconsistent use of the market has defined Russia’s modern economic history from the nineteenth-century Stolypin reforms to Lenin’s New Economic Policy through to the high Soviet years, Gorbachev’s perestroika, and Yeltsin and Gaidar’s shock therapy. And it is no more evident today than in Putin’s management of Russia’s natural resource-based economy.
Yuval Weber provides a concise economic history of modern Russia, which explains how its economy works both at an economic level but also strategically serving its elites’ personal and political agendas. At a time when the global importance of Russia’s oil and gas reserves is in full view, the book examines the Russian Petrostate and considers the long-term challenges for an economy reliant on natural resources for its resilience. The country’s regional imbalances, the demands of its huge military-industrial complex and the legacy of centralization are considered alongside the rising consumerism of its citizens, and other human factors, such as ethnicity, health and demography.
The book offers readers seeking to understand Russia’s economic resilience in an increasingly fractured global economy, an illuminating historical perspective on Russia’s political economy and the power structures underpinning Putin’s governance.
Trade ReviewA clever book that delivers much more than its title promises, as it places Russia's economy within the wider context of the periodic decay and renewal of an authoritarian system and the foreign policy dilemmas this creates. Managing at once to be novel, readable and insightful, it is very highly recommended.
-- Mark Galeotti, author of A Short History of Russia
An illuminating account of how the Russian economy works. Weber has provided a detailed, comprehensive analysis of the interplay of economic and political factors in shaping one of the world's most significant – and most widely misunderstood – economies.
-- Chris Miller, The Fletcher School, Tufts University and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Surely the goat will be dead”
1. Power versus markets
2. Russian economic reform in historical perspective
3. How Putin’s economy is governed: commanding heights and controlling elites
4. Measuring Putin’s economy: the victory of resilience over growth
5. Social factors in Putin’s Russia
6. The Russia you see is the Russia you get: formalizing informality and informalizing power via sistema
Conclusion: resilience, war and Russia’s future
Chronology of Russian history
