Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Boris Yeltsin with a fundamental choice about how to transform Russia’s economy and society—a "bottom-up" civic-democratic revolution with the participation of the country’s populist forces, or a "free-market" revolution from above that involved an alliance between the Yeltsin camp and the nomenklatura, the powerful bureaucrats and factory managers left over from the Soviet era. Yeltsin’s choice of the latter course brought on an economic collapse almost twice as severe as that of America’s Great Depression, and it also subverted prospects for a popularly responsive government and a constructive political opposition. The authors here present a boldly original analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of the Russian state. The keys to understanding these events, they argue, are the prescriptions of Western "transitologists," the International Monetary Fund, and advocates of economic "shock therapy." These prescriptions allowed the nomenklatura and the financial "oligarchs" to acquire Russia’s industrial and natural resources and to heavily influence the country’s political destiny. In this sweeping interpretation, the authors skillfully place the contemporary Russian experience in the context of history, political and social theory, and Russia’s place in the international system. Read more