Russia's Market Economy

This text challenges the myth that there is a set of immutable economic laws that can be applied in Russia as everywhere else. The author contends that the chief failure of the 1990s economic reform was a neglect of the country's cultural heritage. It maps out a path which has the roots of Russia's Soviet and post-Soviet problems in old Muscovy, and challenges the myth that they were uniquely linked to communism and the Soviet order. The book also illustrates the dominance of political considerations over economic considerations in determining macroeconomic policy, from late 1991 until the financial meltdown of August 1998. It shows how powerful vested interests succeeded in unprecedented plunder of the remains of the Soviet economy, leaving it up to tax payers in the West to house and feed those who were excluded from the 1990s boom.