For a decade Russia has been dismantling communism and building capitalism. Describing a deeply flawed fledgling market economy, Capitalism Russian-Style provides a progress report on one of the most important economic experiments going on in the world today. It describes Russian achievements in building private banks and companies, stock exchanges, new laws and law courts. It analyzes the role of the mafia, the rise of new financial empires, entrepreneurs and business tycoons, and the shrinking Russian state. Thane Gustafson tells how the Soviet system was dismantled and the new market society was born. He argues that this new society is changing constantly, so that any assessment of success and failure would be premature. Identifying investment as vital to preserving Russia's status as a major industrial power, in his final chapter he examines the prospects for an economic miracle in Russia in the twenty-first century.

Russia’s Capitalist Realism examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. This book recovers the rich and lively public discourse of this volatile historical period, which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov transformed into some of the world’s greatest works of literature. Russia’s Capitalist Realism will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth‐century Russian literature and history, the relationship between capitalism and literary form, and theories of the novel.

A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. Much of this wealth has been hidden in offshore havens in the United States and the United Kingdom, where companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers are allowed to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia’s economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military might.

In the 1990s, all eyes turned to the momentous changes in Russia, as the world's largest country was transformed into the world's newest democracy. But the heroic images of Boris Yeltsin atop a tank in front of Moscow's White House soon turned to grim new realities: a currency in freefall and a war in Chechnya; on the street, flashy new money and a vicious Russian mafia contrasted with doctors and teachers not receiving salaries for months at a time. If this was what capitalism brought, many Russians wondered if they weren't better off under the communists. This new society did not just appear ready-made: it was created by a handful of powerful men who came to be known as the oligarchs and the young reformers. The oligarchs were fast-talking businessmen who laid claim to Russia's vast natural resources. The young reformers were an elite group of egghead economists who got to put their wild theories into action, with results that were sometimes inspiring, sometimes devastating. With unparalleled access and acute insight, Chrystia Freeland takes us behind the scenes and shows us how these two groups misused a historic opportunity to build a new Russia. Their achievements were considerable, but their mistakes will deform Russian society for generations to come. Along with a gripping account of the incredible events in Russia's corridors of power, Freeland gives us a vivid sense of the buzz and hustle of the new Russia, and inside stories of the businesses that have beaten the odds and become successful and profitable. She also exposes the conflicts and compromises that developed when red directors of old Soviet firms and factories yielded to -- or fought -- the radically new ways of doing business. She delves into the loophole economy, where anyone who knows how to manipulate the new rules can make a fast buck. Sale of the Century is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall economic thriller -- an astonishing and essential account of who really controls Russia's new frontier.

From the three perspectives of geography, economic policy, and ideology, this work examines corporate capitalism under the tsarist and late Soviet regimes. Thomas C. Owen discovers a remarkable history of thwarted effort and lost opportunity. He explores the impact of bureaucratic restrictions and reveals the entrepreneurial capabilities of Russia's corporate founders from various social groups as well as the prominence of Poles, Germans, Jews, Armenians, and foreign citizens in the corporate elite of the Russian Empire and its ten largest cities. The study stresses continuities between tsarist and late Soviet periods, especially in the persistence of anti-capitalist attitudes, both radical and reactionary. A provocative final chapter considers the implications of the weak corporate heritage for the future of Russian capitalism.

What is the relationship between internal development and integration into the global economy in developing countries? How and why do state–market relations differ? And do these differences matter in the post-cold war era of global conflict and cooperation? Drawing on research in China, India, and Russia and examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications, Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism introduces a new theory of sectoral pathways to globalization and development. Adopting a historical approach, the book's Strategic Value Framework shows how state elites perceive the strategic value of sectors in response to internal and external pressures. Sectoral structures and organization of institutions further determine the role of the state in market coordination and property rights arrangements. The resultant dominant patterns of market governance vary by country and sector within country. These national configurations of sectoral models are the micro-institutional foundations of capitalism, which mediate globalization and development.

Entering the shady world of what he calls "violent entrepreneurship," Vadim Volkov explores the economic uses of violence and coercion in Russia in the 1990s. Violence has played, he shows, a crucial role in creating the institutions of a new market economy. The core of his work is competition among so-called violence-managing agencies—criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state—which multiplied with the liberal reforms of the early 1990s. This competition provides an unusual window on the dynamics of state formation.Violent Entrepreneurs is remarkable for its research. Volkov conducted numerous interviews with members of criminal groups, heads of protection companies, law enforcement employees, and businesspeople. He bases his findings on journalistic and anecdotal evidence as well as on his own personal observation. Volkov investigates the making of violence-prone groups in sports clubs (particularly martial arts clubs), associations for veterans of the Soviet—Afghan war, ethnic gangs, and regionally based social groups, and he traces the changes in their activities across the decade. Some groups wore state uniforms and others did not, but all of their members spoke and acted essentially the same and were engaged in the same activities: intimidation, protection, information gathering, dispute management, contract enforcement, and taxation. Each group controlled the same resource—organized violence.

This book intends to be a contribution to the varieties of capitalism paradigm. Our main question is to what extent the present system in Russia, the model of President Putin is a generic model for all post-communist capitalisms.

'Turizm' examines the history of tourism in Russia and eastern Europe from the tsarist period to the age of Soviet and east European mass tourism in the 1960s and 1970s.