ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Russian energy sector—the part of the economy that has the greatest contact with the international economy. It summarizes two contending approaches to understanding the impact of the international economy on domestic politics—economistic and institutionalist—and evaluates their applicability to the post-Soviet case. The chapter provides a brief discussion of the Soviet institutions that structured economic life and sought to insulate the Soviet economy from the world market and considers the extent to which their legacy affects energy policy in the former Soviet republics. The end of the Soviet Union and the advent in Russia and the other former republics of leaders who espouse pro-market economic policies have changed little in the energy sector. A striking feature of the old Soviet Union was the vast disparity of resource endowments—particularly in the energy sector—and levels of economic development among the fifteen constituent republics.
