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The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (1992) examines in
detail the collapse of the Soviet economic system, and is set in
its political context, both international and domestic. The
collapse is looked at from a macroeconomic point of view, both real
and financial, as well as from a mesoeconomic viewpoint, with
chapters on such important sectors such as agriculture and the
railways. Because the USSR is such a large country it is also
looked at in a regional perspective, with chapters on Central Asia
and the allocation of investment between republics, and attention
is also paid to the welfare of the population, their health and the
development of their consumption, and the environment and technical
progress.
The inside story of the political collpase of the Soviet Union is
far better understood than the course of economic and social
disintegration. In order to capture the story, the editors compiled
a list of questions which they addressed to former top Soviet
officials and economic and other policy advisors (both Soviet and
foreign) who were privy not only to data on the functioning of the
Soviet economy but also to the internal policy debate during the
1980s. This volume assembles the Informants' analyses of key issues
and the turning points, and weaves them into a compelling history
of systemic collapse. Among the topics investigated are: economic
policies in the 1980s; the standard of living: the reliability of
Soviet statistics; Gosplan's projections for the economy to the
year 2000; was the arms race starving the civilian economy? the
role of ideology in supporting the functioning of an economic
system; the party's participating in economic management; the
influence of foreign advisors; the struggle over a transition
program; the functioning and collapse of the supply system, the
CMEA, and the foreign trade system.
The inside story of the political collpase of the Soviet Union is
far better understood than the course of economic and social
disintegration. In order to capture the story, the editors compiled
a list of questions which they addressed to former top Soviet
officials and economic and other policy advisors (both Soviet and
foreign) who were privy not only to data on the functioning of the
Soviet economy but also to the internal policy debate during the
1980s. This volume assembles the Informants' analyses of key issues
and the turning points, and weaves them into a compelling history
of systemic collapse. Among the topics investigated are: economic
policies in the 1980s; the standard of living: the reliability of
Soviet statistics; Gosplan's projections for the economy to the
year 2000; was the arms race starving the civilian economy? the
role of ideology in supporting the functioning of an economic
system; the party's participating in economic management; the
influence of foreign advisors; the struggle over a transition
program; the functioning and collapse of the supply system, the
CMEA, and the foreign trade system.
Who rules Russia? This question is generated by President Vladimir
Putin's most ambitious reform program to date-his attempt since
2000 to reshape the Russian federation, centralize much of the
power lost by the Kremlin to the eighty-nine regional governors
during the 1990s, and strengthen his weak grip on Russia's
institutions and political elite. In The Dynamics of Russian
Politics Russian and Western authors from the fields of political
science, economics, ethnology, law, and journalism examine the
reform's impact on key areas of Russian life, including big
business, law enforcement, corruption, political party development,
health care, local government, small business, and ethnic
relations. Volume I presents the historical context and an overview
of the reforms, then tracks how Putin's plans were implemented and
resisted across each of the seven new federal okrugs, or
megaregions, into which he divided Russia. In particular, the
authors analyze the goals and contrasting political styles of his
seven commissars and how their often-concealed struggles with the
more independent and determined governors played out. Volume II
examines the impact of these reforms on Russia's main political
institutions; the increasingly assertive business community; and
the defense, police, and security ministries. It also analyzes how
the reforms have affected such key policy areas as local
government, health care, political party development, the battle
against corruption, small business, ethnic relations, and the
ongoing Chechen war. Together, the two volumes simultaneously
reveal that Putin's successes have been much more limited and
ambiguous than is widely believed in the West while offering
detailed and nuanced answers to the difficult but crucial question:
Who rules Russia?
Scholars attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union in part to the
militarization of its economy. But during the Cold War, economic
studies of the USSR largely neglected the military sector of the
Soviet economy-its dominant and most successful part. This is all
the more puzzling in that academic study of the Soviet economy in
the US was specifically created to help fight the Cold War. If the
rival superpower maintained the peacetime war economy, why did
experts fail to tell us when it mattered? Vladimir Kontorovich
shows how Western economists came up with strained non-military
interpretations of several important aspects of the Soviet economy
which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military
significance. Such "civilianization" suggests that the neglect of
the military sector was not forced on scholars of the Soviet
economy by secrecy; it was their choice. The explanation of this
choice in Reluctant Cold Warriors raises many questions about the
internal workings of economic Sovietology and its intellectual and
political background. Are peripheral academic fields mimicking the
agenda of the discipline's mainstream more likely to produce faulty
scholarship? Did the search for the essence of socialism distract
researchers from the actual Soviet economy? Were economic
Sovietologists under political pressure, and if so, in what
direction? This book answers these questions in a way that has
broad relevance for national security uses of social science today.
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