ABSTRACT

There has been a great deal of largely inconclusive discussion over the past twenty years around the appropriate theoretical framework within which to conceptualise the transformation of the former state socialist economies. The commonly used notion of ‘transition’ has often been questioned as doubly problematic. On the one hand, it is a teleological notion in implying that the process is determined by its end point, whereas critics have emphasised the dependence of the process on the initial conditions, summed up in the notion of ‘path dependence’.1 For this reason some commentators prefer to use the term ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’.2 On other hand, it begs the question of the characterisation of the end point of transition. The transition is most commonly characterised as the ‘transition to a market economy’, which is usually a euphemism for the transition to capitalism, but this leaves open the question of what kind of capitalism is developing in Russia. Is the capitalism that is emerging in Russia modelled on one of the existing ‘varieties of capitalism’?3 Or does Russian capitalism have its own original character, based on the incorporation of capitalist practices into soviet/Russian traditions, values and institutions? If this is the case, how does Russian capitalism measure up to its competitor varieties of capitalism when it confronts them on the world market?