ABSTRACT
By the end of the Yeltsin period in 1999, the early Western optimism about the establishment of a liberal state and society in Russia was replaced by a more critical and cautious stance because of the rise of corruption, crime and authoritarianism in the socio-political sphere and the development of an oligopolistic market structure in the economy. This change in attitude, however, has not led to a significant sense of self-criticism within those liberal perspectives (namely, of the shock therapists and the institutionalists), which have dominated academic studies and proposed supposedly opposing policies on ‘transition’ during the 1990s. On the contrary, the emergence of these problems in Russia was seen as an opportunity to re-validate their assumptions on social change. For the institutionalists, shock therapy-style authoritarian interventions, which had been conducted in total disregard of the country’s institutional needs and legacies, would have apparently led to nowhere but such a disastrous outcome. Economic reforms, they claimed, could have been pursued at a lower cost if complemented with additional steps to build reliable legal and judicial institutions and establish rule of law (McFaul 1995: 225–6; Breslauer et al. 2000: 4–5). The opposite approach of the Russian policy-makers and their advisers had resulted in Russia missing the opportunities for not only democratisation but also economic restructuring along efficiency lines and integration into the stimulating competition of the world market. On the other hand, the response of the shock therapists to these criticisms as well as their alternative explanation was simple enough: the failure had been due not to the implementation but to the non-implementation of their recipes. Hence, the irresponsible, rent-seeking Russian ruling elite becomes the sole target of blame.
