Russia's Economy of Favours

Russia's Economy of Favours PDF Author: Alena V. Ledeneva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521627436
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The word blat refers to the system of informal contacts and personal networks which was used to obtain goods and services under the rationing which characterised Soviet Russia. Alena Ledeneva's book is the first to analyse blat in all its historical, socio-economic and cultural aspects, and to explore its implications for post-Soviet society. In a socialist distribution system which resulted in constant shortages, blat developed into an 'economy of favours' which shadowed an overcontrolling centre and represented the reaction of ordinary people to the social constraints they faced. In social and economic terms, blat exchanges became vital to the population, and to the functioning of the Soviet system. The book shows that the nature of the economic and political changes in contemporary Russia cannot be properly understood without attention to the powerful legacy of the blat economy.

Russia's Economy of Favours

Russia's Economy of Favours PDF Author: Alena V. Ledeneva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521627436
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The word blat refers to the system of informal contacts and personal networks which was used to obtain goods and services under the rationing which characterised Soviet Russia. Alena Ledeneva's book is the first to analyse blat in all its historical, socio-economic and cultural aspects, and to explore its implications for post-Soviet society. In a socialist distribution system which resulted in constant shortages, blat developed into an 'economy of favours' which shadowed an overcontrolling centre and represented the reaction of ordinary people to the social constraints they faced. In social and economic terms, blat exchanges became vital to the population, and to the functioning of the Soviet system. The book shows that the nature of the economic and political changes in contemporary Russia cannot be properly understood without attention to the powerful legacy of the blat economy.

How Russia Really Works

How Russia Really Works PDF Author: Alena V. Ledeneva
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470056
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
During the Soviet era, blat—the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures—was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s—from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. Ledeneva discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations, the media, politicians, and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The "know-how" Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia.

Can Russia Modernise?

Can Russia Modernise? PDF Author: Alena V. Ledeneva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521110823
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
A political ethnography of the inner workings of Putin's sistema, contributing to our understanding Russia's prospects for future modernisation.

The Conundrum of Russian Capitalism

The Conundrum of Russian Capitalism PDF Author: Ruslan Dzarasov
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9781849649100
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Reveals the nature of Russian capitalism following the fall of the Soviet Union, showing the impact of both Soviet bureaucracy and global capital.

The Unmaking of Soviet Life

The Unmaking of Soviet Life PDF Author: Caroline Humphrey
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487736
Category : Mongolia
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten essays from award-winning author Caroline Humphrey. Humphrey explores such topics as the mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism, locating them in the experiences of a wide range of subjects.

Networks in the Russian Market Economy

Networks in the Russian Market Economy PDF Author: M. Lonkila
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230294936
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. This book examines the significance of networks among the firms operative in the contemporary Russian software industry in the St. Petersburg region.

Economies of Favour After Socialism

Economies of Favour After Socialism PDF Author: David Henig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199687412
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
A volume on the economics of favours and how they function as socially efficacious actions in post-socialist regions including central, eastern, and south eastern Europe; the former Soviet Union; Mongolia; and post-Maoist China.

Fortune Favors the Bold

Fortune Favors the Bold PDF Author: Lester C. Thurow
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0061743984
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Bestselling author and renowned economist Lester Thurow argues forcefully that globalization is not a done deal and we must seize the moment now if we are to create a new global economy in which all can prosper. In this new book, Thurow examines the newly–forming global economy, with a special focus on the role of the US and the dangers to our own national well–being. He examines such questions as: What's at stake for us in the global economy? Why is it important that the system be equitable and that other countries prosper along with us? What should our goals as a nation be – long term and short term? What are the tough choices that need to be made in our relationship with other countries and world regulatory bodies? What role should we be playing globally? What are the political, economic, social choices / tradeoffs we will have to confront? Thurow contends that the huge and growing US trade deficit poses grave dangers to the value of the dollar and is putting our own economy in jeopardy. As the world economy leaps national boundaries, its hallmark seems to be a rising instability and a growing inequality between the first and third worlds. Financial crises in the third world come ever more frequently and seem to be ever more severe. The first world economies seem to be in ever more frantic boom and bust cycles. Globalization causes riots throughout the world and is one factor in the rise of terrorism against the West. Thurow shows how some nations, including Ireland and China, have embraced the concept of globalization and placed themselves into a position to prosper with growing and productive national economies. He contrasts their positive actions with Japan, whose leaders have allowed the nation to drift into stagnation and have destroyed its prosperity. He argues that this is the time to choose globalization or be left behind, the time to "build a global economy that eliminates the defects," and he provides plenty of ideas for corporations, governments, economists, and citizens to act upon.

The Cultural Front

The Cultural Front PDF Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501724088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
When Lenin asked, "Who will beat whom?" (Kto kogo?), he had no plan to wage revolutionary class war in culture. Many young Communists thought differently, however. Seeking in the name of the proletariat to wrest "cultural hegemony" from the intelligentsia, they turned culture into a battlefield in the 1920s. But was this, as Communist militants thought, a genuine class struggle between "proletarian" Communists and the "bourgeois" intelligentsia? Or was it, as the intelligentsia believed, an onslaught by the ruling Communist Party on the eternal principles of cultural autonomy and intellectual freedom? In this volume, one of the foremost historians of the Soviet Union chronicles the fierce battle on "the cultural front" from the October Revolution through the Stalinist 1930s. Sheila Fitzpatrick brings together ten of her essays—two previously unpublished and all revised for inclusion here—which illuminate key arenas of the prolonged struggle over cultural values and institutional control. Individual essays deal with such major issues as the Cultural Revolution, the formation of the new Stalinist elite, and socialist realism, as well as recounting colorful episodes including the uproar over Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, arguments over sexual mores, and the new consumerism of the 1930s. Closely examining the cultural elites and orthodoxies that developed under Stalin, Fitzpatrick offers a provocative reinterpretation of the struggle's final outcome in which the intelligentsia, despite its loss of autonomy and the debasement of its culture, emerged as a partial victor. The Cultural Front is essential reading for anyone interested in the formative history of the Soviet Union and the dynamic relationship between culture and politics.

Red Plenty

Red Plenty PDF Author: Francis Spufford
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.