Russia: Political and Institutional Determinants of Economic Reforms

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the course, determinants and political economy of economic reforms in Russia conducted in the period 1985–2005. The year 1985 can be considered an important turning point in Soviet and Russian history, marked as it was by the election of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and (de facto) leader of the USSR. This nomination brought an end to two decades of political consolidation of the Communist regime connected with the name of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and his short-lived successors (Yurii Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko), often referred to ex post as ‘the stagnation period’ (vremya zastoya). Gorbachev initiated a series of important political and (to a lesser extent) economic reforms, which led eventually to the collapse of the communist regime and the disintegration of the Soviet empire in 1991. Thus, 1991 must be seen as another dramatic turning point in Russia’s contemporary history. From the end of 1991 onwards political and economic reforms have been carried out by the new Russian state that emerged after the disintegration of the USSR.