ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Russian reformers attempts in the 1990s to restructure the political economy of Russia. Russian reformers saw the global economy as a powerful resource that could be used to support the struggle to reform Russia. The chapter explains why the different foreign economic strategies failed, explaining, inter alia, the collapse of ‘shock therapy’ in the early 1990s and the 1998 crisis. It describes how unexpected effects of the 1998 crisis and high world oil prices have worked to alleviate financial pressures on the state under Putin and what this means. The Baltic states excepted, Russia was unique amongst the former Soviet states in unambiguously making a choice for radical economic reform in the wake of the USSR’s collapse. Reformist aspirations to achieve rapid reintegration with global economy thus depended on the success of radical economic reform. The oil-dependent nature of the post-1998 boom and its partiality show that the Russian economy is in remission, rather than cured.
