ABSTRACT
The most popular, and influential, perspective that prevailed in the race to advise Russia and other Newly Independent States was inspired by monetarist economists. Russian industrial and agricultural production has fallen, increasingly displaced by a burgeoning economy of middlemen who sustain the Russian economy through vast infusions of imported goods that have added no productive value to the economy. Fears that Russia is returning to a statist tradition—more pronounced in the wake of the conflict in Chechnya—are exaggerated, for Russia is going nowhere at all. The “softening” of central state bureaucracies permitted regional governments to usurp the initiative in reform policy: Russia was inescapably headed toward a broader decentralization of political and economic authority. The ability to subordinate the political process to binding legal decisions is essential for the stability of democratic systems. Pragmatism has made few inroads into the political process in Russia.
