The Russian Economy

Russian leaders have sought control over the economy to manage their support base, respond to security threats, and facilitate geopolitical ambitions. This history has defined Russia's modern economic history, from Stolypin reforms to Lenin's New Economic Policy, Gorbachev's perestroika, and Yeltsin and Gaidar's shock therapy. Yuval Weber's book examines the Russian Petrostate and considers the long-term challenges for an economy reliant on natural resources, including regional imbalances, the military-industrial complex, and centralization. It offers readers an illuminating historical perspective on Russia's political economy and the power structures underpinning Putin's governance.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 04 May 2023
Publisher: Agenda Publishing

Since Tsarist times, Russia's leaders have sought control over economic activity as a means to manage their own support base, respond to perceived security threats, and facilitate their wider geopolitical ambitions. Balancing the needs of an authoritarian state with the tentative and inconsistent use of the market has defined Russia's modern economic history from the nineteenth-century Stolypin reforms to Lenin's New Economic Policy through to the high Soviet years, Gorbachev's perestroika, and Yeltsin and Gaidar's shock therapy. And it is no more evident today than in Putin's management of Russia's natural resource-based economy.

Yuval Weber provides a concise economic history of modern Russia, which explains how its economy works both at an economic level and strategically serving its elites' personal and political agendas. At a time when the global importance of Russia's oil and gas reserves is in full view, the book examines the Russian Petrostate and considers the long-term challenges for an economy reliant on natural resources for its resilience. The country's regional imbalances, the demands of its huge military-industrial complex, and the legacy of centralization are considered alongside the rising consumerism of its citizens, and other human factors, such as ethnicity, health, and demography.

The book offers readers seeking to understand Russia's economic resilience in an increasingly fractured global economy an illuminating historical perspective on Russia's political economy and the power structures underpinning Putin's governance.

Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781788210287