Russia And Development

The author analyzes the history of the USSR from a new perspective. Detailed examination of ideological heritage of the XIXth and XXth centuries shows new aspects of the Russian Revolution.

The story of the economic development of the Soviet Union provided the first case in history of the establishment of a socialist economy and was therefore of great interest for economists and economic historians of the twentieth century. At the same time it affords a unique example of the transformation of a country into an industrial nation at an unprecedented pace and under the guidance of a national economic plan. This book examines these changes from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1927.

The transformation from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia cannot be fully understood without taking the elites into full consideration. Elites and Democratic Development in Russia examines how elites support and challenge democracy and why they are crucial to Russian democracy in particular. In this innovative volume, twelve respected scholars investigate how elites have affected the transition from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia. They discuss how the elites' degree of integration on national and regional levels may constitute the main condition for the consolidation of the emerging political regime and interpret the complex post-communist elite patterns of behaviour and attitudes into a theoretical framework of elitist democracy. This book will appeal to those interested in democratization, elites, post-Soviet Russia and post-communist studies.

The state remains as important to Russia's prospects as ever. This is so not only because, as in any society, an effectively functioning state administration is necessary to the proper functioning of a complex economy and legal system, but also because, in Russian circumstances, factors of economic geography tend to increase costs of production compared to the rest of the world. These mutually reinforcing factors include: the extreme severity of the climate, the immense distances to be covered, the dislocation between (European) population centers and (Siberian) natural resource centers, and the inevitable predominance of relatively costly land transportation over sea-borne transportation. As a result, it is questionable whether Russia can exist as a world civilization under predominantly liberal economic circumstances: in a unified liberal global capital market, large-scale private direct capital investment will not be directed to massive, outdoor infrastructure projects typical of state investment in the Soviet period.

Tsygankov provides a succinct account of the major periods in evolution of Russia's strong state construct by reviewing the external and internal contexts of its emergence, progression, and fall in Muscovy, St. Petersburg, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia with an emphasis on the last two decades. Each time a combination of these contexts was distinct thereby producing different political outcomes in Russia. The book argues that a perspective on Russia from a Western viewpoint is limited and that there has been an alternative way of thinking about the nation and its problems.

Reporting the findings of a joint Swedish-Russian research project, economists overview Russia's regional development during the entire Soviet period, and analyze the array of regional problems facing Russia at the birth of the 21st century. For the Soviet period they reveal that the development of heavy industry actually reduced regional inequalities, but that disparities widened as the economy diversified, and that the science of regional planning never achieved practical application during a regime of central planning. Among the important factors contributing to cohesion and disintegration in Russia today, they cite ethnicity, religion, and Russian nationalism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The consequences of current experiments in socio-economic global transformation are not favorable for Russia. At the same time, the optimum development trajectory of the country has not been clearly delineated by either theorists or practitioners either in political or socio-economic terms. The paradigm of the market economy has become outdated and is now an object of exploitation by global transnational corporations. There is a need for interdisciplinary consolidation, which can become the basis for understanding the role of the political and economic components of knowledge about the economy and society, the necessity and possibility for its improvement, and its application for the benefit of the country and the world, not excluding departure from obsolete stereotypes while maintaining the basic principles of logic and morality. It is time to redirect the apparatus of economic science to achieve real national and global welfare by eliminating irrational practices characteristic of both government intervention and private entrepreneurship, aimed at the realization of bureaucratic and oligarchic interests.