ABSTRACT
By 1998 the major steps in the transformation of the Russian economy from state ownership and administrative control to private ownership and market relations were completed. This chapter considers the ways in which the oil industry has relatively successfully adapted to a world market economy, examining divisions within the industry between management and financial interests, and disagreements within the ruling political apparatus about the extent and type of regulation and control. Many accounts of state socialism have assumed a monolithic, centrally administered economy, but in the oil industry there was no single controlling hub in Soviet times. By the middle of 1992, it was proposed to organize the oil industry into 10 to 12 large, vertically integrated companies able to compete, it was thought, on Russian and world markets. Attitudes toward the political system were divided, with a majority of the oil elite advocating considerable change, and half of the politicians calling for complete systemic change.
