Agriculture as the Basis of a New Russia
An Open Letter to the Authorities Boris Akimov is a man of all trades. Until 2010 he worked as a journalist for Afisha and Snob,…
Read MorePolitical Economy
Political economy is how government policy affects the economy. Some obvious examples of how the government can affect the economy are through infrastructure development, government subsidies, monetary policy, tariffs, and other measures that restrict some economic areas and assist or encourage others.
Creating a Dam National Space: Rakhmon’s Socialist Realist Promotion of Roghun
What we have inherited is the nation state as conceptualised later on in the Soviet period. It is an ethnic nationalism centered on statehood, the…
Russia’s Forest Sector and International Trade in Forest Products: Export Taxes on Roundwood, Priority Investment Projects, and WTO Accession
Wood, well made into buildings and furniture and well cared for, can last hundreds of years, but it is now routinely manufactured into products that…
The Varieties of Capitalism Dichotomy (and Beyond) in Post-Communist States
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave rise to fifteen independent states, as well as a challenge for those who study national political…
The Medvedev Economy
The Russian economy is due for a major shift. Much of the rapid growth from the past eight years has come from something called “unused…
From the Silk Road to Chevron: The Geopolitics of Oil Pipelines in Central Asia
Kazakhstan has received much press recently as a result of the success of the comic film Borat. However, that movie got everything wrong in its depiction…
Deconstructing the Millennium Manifesto: The Yeltsin-Putin Transition and the Rebirth of Ideology
Introduction: The Dearth of Ideology On the 12th July 1996, following a closely fought election victory, Boris Yeltsin called his advisors to him. ‘In Russia’s…
Privately Enforced Capitalism: The Rise (and Fall?) of Russia’s Oligarchs
Today in Russia, a small group of men called the oligarchs control a disproportionate portion of the Russian economy. In a capitalist environment, a large…
Democracy, Anarchy, and Siberian Resources
Russia is a land whose boundless possibilities are matched only by its perpetual troubles. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the resource rich…