How is it that the Soviet superpower became the economically dependent Russia of the late 1990s? Based upon impressive archival research and extensive fieldwork, this timely study compares the politics of Gorbachev and Yeltsin as the attempted to throw off the enduring economic legacies of Stalinism.

Because workers and labor policy lay at the heart of the communist experiment, Christensen focuses upon the organization and activism of the Russian working class. Challenging the prevailing views of sovietologists, Christensen argues that the labor movement under Gorbachev was as crucial for the destruction of communism as were the nationalist revolts.

Indeed, Christensen shows that Gorbachev facilitated democratization more successfully than Yeltsin. Russian economic collapse was not inevitable but rather the result of Yeltsin's inappropriate policies. "Shock therapy" and unregulated privatization prevented democratic control over the economy and weakened an emerging worker movement that held great promise for easing Russia's transition to a stable post-communist system.

Russia's Workers in Transition approaches economic and social policy in Russia historically as well as empirically, tracing long-term evolutions across the Soviet and Russian periods. Russia's unique circumstances explain the failure of transition policies that had worked elsewhere, leading Christensen to reexamine the assumptions of "post-communist" transition theory.

Theoretically sophisticated yet accessible, Russia's Workers in Transition is essential reading for those interested in Soviet and Russian history and politics, labor policy, and democratic transitions.