ABSTRACT
Since the late 1990s, auditing standards, in particular International Standards on Auditing, have come to assume a key position in current debates about the development of auditing in Russia. For auditors, regulators, academics, and other parties involved in the production and consumption of audits, it has become almost impossible to think of good auditing as independent from internationally oriented standards. These standards are presented as solutions to problems of audit quality assurance, as a means to enhance the professional qualifi cation of auditors, as an instrument for the management of public mistrust, and as a tool to deal with issues of costeffectiveness and the internal organization of audit work. The standards are promoted as a regulatory device that can be employed to facilitate the development of the emerging audit profession, and to accelerate Russia’s integration into the West. This chapter is devoted to a detailed empirical examination of the conditions that made possible the rise in the popularity and perceived indispensability of the standards. The collapse of the Soviet Union initiated a new era in the understanding and management of Russia’s economy and society. In 1991, Russia, together with other Eastern European and former Soviet states, made a radical break with socialist modes of government. The roles of government had been called into question and, as a consequence, spheres of state action and nonaction became renegotiated. Processes of reform were initiated, aimed at the liberalization of economic activities, the freeing of prices, the introduction of private property, and the establishment of more pluralistic, democratic forms of governance.
