ABSTRACT

This chapter presents an overview of Russian economic policy and performance since 1992, with a view to highlighting the ways in which Russia’s politics today are shaped by the legacies of both Soviet central planning and the policies pursued since 1992. To be sure, many factors have contributed to the evolution of post-Soviet Russia’s political economy – factional, ideological, geopolitical and conjunctural – but the central argument of this chapter is that much of the explanation for the peculiarities of Russia’s post-Soviet development is structural. While press coverage and public discussion have largely focused on conflicts between the Kremlin and big business and rivalries among elite political “clans” around Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev, a deeper understanding of Russia’s political economy requires an examination of the interaction between state capacities and Russia’s industrial structure.