Reexamining Economic and Political Reforms in Russia, 1985-2000: Generations, Ideas, and Changes

Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1. Turning Points of Russia’s Reforms: Generation Changes and Shifting Trajectories Chapter 2. The Point of Departure: Late-Soviet Negative Consensus Chapter 3. Perestroika: From Revival to Collapse Chapter 4. Post-Soviet Challenges: Difficult Choices During the “Triple Transition” Chapter 5. The Roaring Nineties Chapter 6. Unfree Market Economy under Autocracy Bibliography

About the Author :
Vladimir Gel’man is a professor of political science and sociology at the European University at St.Petersburg and Finland distinguished professor at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Otar Marganiya is the dean of faculty of economics at St. Petersburg State University and the president of the Center for Modernization Studies at the European University at St. Petersburg. Dmitry Travin is the academic director of the Center for Modernization Studies and a professor at the European University at St. Petersburg.

Review :
[This book] provides an excellent overview of the political and economic reforms during a crucial fifteen-year period in Russian history . . . Readers will . . . recognize the book's great value in contextualizing the beliefs of the late Soviet and post-Soviet reformers within a broader historical evolution of ideas and experiences. Both experts and students of Russian political economy will learn from this clearly written, empirically rich book. In this lucid, stimulating and highly readable work...the authors examine what they call the 'long and winding road' of economic and political transformation in the USSR/Russia since 1985. Reexamining Economic and Political Reforms in Russia presents a broad-brush, historical account of changesin Russian elite thinking….[This] book end[s] with the assertion that Russia is on ‘the path to freedom,’ yet one can’t help but wonder, given that the analyses presented seem to suggest further stagnation in Russia’s medium-term future, whether this assertion is a prognosis or merely a hope. This short book offers a novel interpretation of the changes that have wracked Russia over the last 30 years. The book argues that change in Russia has been driven by ideas and generational change…. [T]his useful volume is the best brief history of the recent Russian past and the ideas that have driven change that we have and is recommended for specialists and students alike. Reexamining Economic and Political Reforms in Russia, 1985-2000 takes a pioneering step away from long-running debates over whether the 1980s and 1990s reforms were good or bad for Russia, and blazes new trail on the very important question of how we can explain these reforms as major historical phenomena. The authors’ account is fascinating and novel, tracing different phases of reforms to ideas specific to particular generations dubbed the ‘sixtiers’ and ‘seventiers.’ This approach provides a useful framework for thinking about how Russia will change once a new generation reaches the pinnacle of power, one whose formative experiences postdate the Soviet period. This is a splendid read, a great intellectual analysis of Russia’s post-communist transformation by some of St. Petersburg’s foremost scholars. This book focuses on ideology, generations, and sociology rather than politics and economics. In an accessible language with all relevant Russian and Western academic references, the authors bring out the complexity of the Russian transition. Their writing is original and open-minded, more like brain-storming than a set theory, helping us to understand the confusing Russian transformation.