Russian Bureaucracy And The State

Russian Bureaucracy and the State provides a rich and innovative assessment of Russian bureaucracy from 1881 to the present. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the work assesses the organization, personnel, and practices of officialdom across three different Russian regimes – tsarist, Soviet and postcommunist.

Russian Bureaucracy and the State provides a rich and innovative assessment of Russian bureaucracy from 1881 to the present. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the work assesses the organization, personnel, and practices of officialdom across three different Russian regimes - tsarist, Soviet and postcommunist

This unique study provides an original, nitty-gritty view of the true nature and operation of Russia's state bureaucracy from the imperial period to the present, including the Putin presidency. The only book-length exploration of the problems and deficiencies of Russian bureaucracy since tsarist times, this detailed work sheds important new light on Russian public administration, an often-overlooked but key barrier to Russian normalization and democratization.

�What was the revolution of the 1990s for Russia?� writes Yegor Gaidar. �Was it a hard but salutary road toward the creation of a workable democracy with workable markets, a way for Russia to develop and survive in the twenty-first century? Or was it the prologue to another closed, stultified regime marching to the music of old myths and anthems?� Few are as well-equipped to consider this matter as Gaidar, noted Russian economist and prime minister during Boris Yeltsin�s early years as post-Soviet Russia�s leader. He is also a student of the socioeconomic history of his country, which he traces in the book with skill and insight. Both Eastern and Western influences are examined in light of Russia�s particular challenges and choices over the years and the kinds of institutions it developed as a result. The author focuses on comparing attitudes toward private property and the persistence of Eastern forms of landownership. He sees Marx�s concept of the �Asiatic mode of production� as unfortunately still reflecting Russian realities. Gaidar�s interesting analysis of Western development offers a perspective on private ownership of property in relation to government ownership that explains a lot about the evolution of socioeconomic and political systems East and West. �If our country begins yet another cycle of privatization of authority and office,� concludes the author, �it will shut itself off from the First World. If we can open up this socioeconomic space, if we can let liberal democratic evolution take its course, then Russia will have every chance in the world to take its rightful place among twenty-first-century civilizations.� State and Evolution was published in Russia in 1994. The English edition includes a new preface discussing the significance of events since that time.

After the fall of communism in Russia, most observers took for granted that the structures of the new democratic state would be effective agents of the popular will. This assumption was overly optimistic. Eleven respected contributors examine governance in post-Soviet Russia in comparative context, investigating the roots, characteristics, and consequences of the crisis as a whole and its manifestations in the specific realms of tax collection, statistics, federalism, social policy, regulation of the banks, currency exchange, energy policy, and parliamentary oversight of the bureaucracy.

This study critically assesses the condition of Russia's political, economic, social, legal, and military institutions and questions the capacity of the institutions to perform the duties of a state in the modern world. Has the Russian state managed to lay the institutional groundwork for long-term stability and democratic governance? The consensus of the contributors to this book is grim. The courts have grown increasingly complex, but their ability to enhance and support democracy has remained limited. State economic institutions have been unable to collect taxes, pay government workers, fund the healthcare system, pay its soldiers, or retain value in its currency. Political mechanisms for resolving center-periphery conflicts remain ineffective, and Russia's political institutions seem less focused on serving public interests than on enriching the power of those in power.

This invaluable text traces Russia's complex historical dveleopment in the last century, its recent political troubles and economic misfortunes and its place in the contemporary international system.