ABSTRACT
The collapse of the Communist Party and the Moscow-based centrally planned economic decision making has 'hollowed-out' the nation state in political and economic decision making in Russia. This has facilitated new firm start-ups and opened local economies to the forces of globalization (Swain & Hardy 1998). As a result, a range of local, regional, national and supranational players - such as local and supranational states, quasi-state organizations, and domestic and foreign capital - increasingly define local fortunes along with old actors dating from the socialist period. Hence, post-socialist local economies have become arenas for the operation of multiple social, economic, political and cultural rationales with roots in diverse periods (novel, state socialist, or even earlier ones). Post-socialist change at the local scale is therefore a complex (Pavlínek 1997) and open-ended (Stark 1995; Hausner et al. 1995) process, and its course and outcome are necessarily place-specific (see also Pickles & Smith 1998; Pavlínek 1997; Swain & Hardy 1998; Smith 1998; Stryjakiewicz 2000).
