Product Description

The Russian revolution, collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia's ensuing transformation belong to the greatest dramas of our time. Revolutions are usually messy and emotional affairs, challenging much of the conventional wisdom, and Russia's experience is no exception. This book focuses on the transformation from Soviet Russia to Russia as a market economy, and explores why the country has failed to transform into a democracy. It examines the period from 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet Union's Secretary General of the Communist Party, to the present Russia of Vladimir Putin. Aslund provides a broad overview of Russia's economic change, highlighting the most important issues and their subsequent resolutions, including Russia's inability to sort out the ruble zone during its revolution, several failed coups, and the financial crash of August 1998.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132318 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

About the Author
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2006, is the author of Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc (Cambridge University Press, 2001), How Russia Became a Market Economy (Brookings, 1995), Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform, 2d ed. (Cornell University Press, 1991), and editor or coeditor of several books, including Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006). He has served as the director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2003-2006) and as codirector of the Carnegie Moscow Center's project on Economies of the Post-Soviet States.

Customer Reviews

Good for the chronology very dodgy for interpretation
This book is only for use by the well-informed. Readers coming to it with no background in the history of Russia or the brutal introduction of market 'reforms' during the 80s and 90s will leave it with a badly distorted view of a crucial part of recent history.

Aslund is an apologist for the worst excesses of policies that were unthinkingly introduced by those with only a puerile grasp of economics. As such his book is partial in its argument and grotesquely prejudiced in its conclusions. Perhaps worst of all for a quasi-academic text, Aslund makes sweeping comments that are totally unsupported by fact: Did indeed "many Russians veterans of the Afghan war return as drug addicts and hardened criminals" (p 34)? Or was it their economic circumstances after their return (brought about by the 'reforms') that turned some of them into one or both?

It takes great facility in a foreign language to convincingly produce a completely bogus argument by reference to facts. Dr Aslund is to be congratulated on his command of English if not his wisdom as evidenced by his arguments.