Household production and capitalist development in contemporary Russia

This essay reviews four recent books based on research on the development of capitalism and the position of household-based farming in post-Soviet Russia. Each of the books represents a different set of conceptual assumptions and is based on different methods of enquiry. It is argued that a problematic feature of much of the literature on this topic is that it begins from the assumption that successful capitalist development in Russian agriculture should be based on the development of small-scale family farming. This tends to obscure the variety of forms of production that have emerged so far and the range of different relationships between them

Are command economies unstable? why did the soviet economy collapse?

A transformational recession? Between 1989 and 1992 Soviet GDP per head fell by approximately 40 per cent. In asking why this happened we may hope to learn about the nature of both the old Soviet economy and its transition to the new Russia. But to do so we must first dispense with a series of illusions. Think of a command economy with an initial endowment of physical and human capital. These assets are capable of producing either capitalist or socialist goods, measured along the vertical and horizontal axes respectively in figure 1. The difference between them is that capitalist goods add value at market prices; socialist goods do not add value but create employment, which is why a dictator may command them to be produced, so initially the economy’s assets are specialised in the production of socialist goods at point A.

The political economy of Russia’s economic transition problems since 1991 and their implications for Russia’s relations with the west

Copyright @ 2001, The Author

Ownership and Enterprise Performance in the Russian Oil Industry 1992-2012

This paper examines enterprise performance in Russian oil companies between 1992 and 2012. The analysis is based upon longitudinal trend output data, and distinguishes between four different types of owners - outsider private, insider private, federal state and regional state. In comparison with previous studies which considered just 1999-2004, and identified outsider private companies as the best performers, this paper finds that over the longer period 1992-2012 federal state and insider private owned companies actually performed best. The explanation for this relates to ‘institutions’ and the business environment

Coercion, compliance, and the collapse of the Soviet command economy

Are command systems that rest on coercion inherently unstable, and did the Soviet economy collapse for this reason? Until it collapsed, the Soviet economy did not appear unstable. Why, then, did it collapse? A game between a dictator and a producer shows that a high level of coercion may yield a stable high–output equilibrium, that stability may rest in part on the dictator's reputation, and that a collapse may be brought about by adverse trends in the dictator's costs and a loss of reputation. The facts of the Soviet case are consistent with a collapse that was triggered by the strike movement of 1989

Caspian oil in global context

This paper provides a brief overview of the political economy of Caspian oil. It begins by situating the Caspian region’s oil sectors in the larger global market, before proceeding to examine the ways in which the Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Kazakh oil sectors have been organised and governed since 1991. The paper then considers the likely consequences of recent policy shifts in Kazakhstan, the region’s most important oil producer. A further section considers the questions of transport infrastructure and export routes, which remain particularly complex problems for Central Asia’s landlocked producers. This is followed by a brief conclusion. The paper’s central argument is that it is by no means certain that the Caspian region’s hydrocarbon potential will be developed in a timely, economically efficient way

Empty spaces and the value of symbols: Estonia's 'war of monuments' from another angle

Taking as its point of departure the recent heightened discussion surrounding publicly sited monuments in Estonia, this article investigates the issue from the perspective of the country's eastern border city of Narva, focusing especially upon the restoration in 2000 of a 'Swedish Lion' monument to mark the 300th anniversary of Sweden's victory over Russia at the first Battle of Narva. This commemoration is characterised here as a successful local negotiation of a potentially divisive past, as are subsequent commemorations of the Russian conquest of Narva in 1704. A recent proposal to erect a statue of Peter the Great in the city, however, briefly threatened to open a new front in Estonia's ongoing 'war of monuments'. Through a discussion of these episodes, the article seeks to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics, nationalism and post-communist transition

A Sharp Turn toward the Market: Economic Reform in Russia (1992–1998) and Its Consequences

By analyzing and systematizing the literature accumulated over the past twenty years on the history of reforms, we can put in order the existing views on the processes that took place during these transformations and de ne a new vector in understanding the socio-economic development of Russia in the last decade of the 20th century and the rst decades of the 21st century. The rst step in this direction is the analysis of publications that re ect the preparation, progress and results of the contemporary economic reforms in the 1990s. The historiographic review includes the monographs written both by the advocates of the shock therapy, and their opponents and critics, rst of all, Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The study of this literature allows to reveal the spectrum of opinions on whether the shock therapy was the preferred version of transformations, on assessing the results of reforms by the end of the 1990s and the opportunities for alternative ways to make the transition from a planned to a market economy. In particular, the advocates of the «shock therapy» refer to the threat of famine and civil war to justify decisions that led to decline in output, hyperin ation and other negative trends. Their critics point out that the lack of public support caused the market reforms to fail. By acknowledging the obvious, i. e. a signi cant deterioration of economic indicators, the advocates see their success in establishing the system of market institutions, and, on this basis, insist there was no alternative to implemented version of reforms. In turn, their opponents believe that the alternatives to the «shock therapy» existed, and their distinctive feature would have been the gradual cultivation and not the forced administrative introduction of market economy institutions.This article has been prepared with the support in the form of a Grant No. 16–02–00016a from the Russian Foundation for Humanities

Inequality and poverty in the CIS-7, 1989-2002

This paper examines the impact of a decade of transition on the living standards of people living in seven of the poorest Republics of the former Soviet Union – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan (known as the CIS-7). Data are drawn from a wide variety of sources, providing a comprehensive overview of household and individual welfare within the region. The picture painted is a bleak one, with rising income inequality, high levels of material poverty, and deterioration in health status and in access to health and education services. However, there are now the green shoots of economic recovery. Since 2000 all countries have experienced positive economic growth. The challenge for policy makers is to ensure that the benefits of this growth are shared equally amongst the population and that human capabilities are protected and strengthened

Trends in Soviet labour productivity 1928–85 : war, postwar recovery, and slowdown

Understanding the pattern of postwar slowdown in Soviet productivity growth requires evaluation of the impact of World War II and associated shocks. Continuous productivity series for industry and the whole economy are estimated for the period 1928–85. The pattern of Soviet productivity growth was highly disturbed; by postwar standards its underlying growth was slow. Rapid growth and slowdown from the late 1940s through the 1960s and beyond are explained just by postwar recovery possibilities and their exhaustion. Clear evidence of an adverse break in the productivity trend does not transpire until the 1970s