Harley Balzer

The Putin Thesis and Russian Energy Policy

A specialist on Russian politics and society analyzes Russian President Vladimir Putins academic work on mineral resources in the Russian economy. Mr. Putin defended a kandidat dissertation in economics and subsequently published an article outlining his view of the appropriate role of the Russian state, and of vertically integrated financial-industrial groups, in the mineral resource sector, and particularly in the oil and gas industry. Connections are drawn between the views expressed in Mr. Putins publications and policy during his second presidential term.

Routinization of the New Russians

The era of the “New Russians” in post-Soviet society was a remarkably brief interlude, one of many times that Russia has experienced a “compressed development” of the country’s social structure. 1 The New Russians, like NEPmen in the 1920s, were a negative stereotype associated with a period of abrupt and painful social change. Unlike the NEPmen, many of whom suffered repression in the 1930s, the New Russians are rapidly evolving into a group resembling a nascent haute bourgeoisie, or Asia’s “new rich.” 2 Routinized New Russians have become an emblem of the apparent “stability” of the Putin era; whether that stability is sustainable remains an open question. This article begins by discussing the multiple identities ascribed to, and in a few cases assumed by, New Russians. Not surprisingly, they see themselves quite differently from the popular stereotypes. I then turn to locating the New Russians in context by examining other treatments of the new rich. The final two sections consider the evolution of New Russians, first in terms of changing patterns of social stratification and then by looking at some of the iconographic evidence.

Migration between China and Russia

Drawing on data from a years fieldwork in Northeast China and several visits to the Russian Far East, a senior scholar and a current PhD candidate examine migration between Russia and China, focusing on the Chinese context. Does evidence support claims of large-scale legal or illegal Chinese migration to Russia since 1991? The number of Chinese working in Russia is assessed in terms of Chinese global migration, and shifting economic and demographic conditions in the two countries are considered with respect to prospects for future Chinese migration.

The Russian tragedy : the burden of history

This work provides a guide to Mexicos political, social and economic issues. It offers coverage of events leading up to NAFTA as well as discussions on the political structure of Mexico and its implications for the future, including relations with the United States.

From hypercentralization to diversity:: Continuing efforts to restructure soviet education

Abstract The Soviet secondary education system has been undergoing a protracted period of reform. Initiated in the Brezhnev era as a way to improve central control and coordination to meet economic and labor force needs, the reforms have changed profoundly as Gorbachevs perestroika has evolved. In the face of resource stringency and political confusion, authority over the education system and responsibility for its financing has increasingly devolved to republican, regional, and local authorities. In this process there have been a few striking success stories, accompanied by a tremendous amount of confusion. It would now be impossible to reassemble the old centralized system, but it is not yet clear what will take its place.

The Soviet Scientific-Technical Revolution: Education of Cadres

Mikhail Gorbachev recently boasted that the population of the USSR is the best-educated group in the world (Pravda, July 29,1986). In terms of formal criteria, this may well be true. The Soviet education system has achieved FORMAL levels of certification beyond those of America, Europe or Japan. Half of the engineers in the world work in the Soviet Union. Yet the return on this massive investment in education has been a severe disappointment to Soviet leaders. The Economist recently pointed out that the Soviet population endures “the lowest standard of living ever imposed on a people as genuinely well-educated as they” (The Economist, July 26, 1986, p. 10).

The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold. Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy

t the end of part one of Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol portrays Russia as a troika racing across the landscape, its destination unknown, but the exhilaration and speed of the ride compensating for the uncertainty. Gogol’s image evoked a country with what seemed to be limitless space. Russian rulers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries sought to exploit and colonize the vast, inhospitable regions of Siberia and the Far East, while also looking south and west. It took the Bolsheviks to marshal economic and human resources, plus sheer willpower/hubris, to forge large cities in cold places where no economically motivated planner would have put them. This is the story told brilliantly by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy. The collaboration between Brookings scholars Hill, a Harvard-trained historian, and Gaddy, an economist from Duke, gives the book temporal perspective as well as policy relevance. The first eight chapters build the case that Russia has inherited an extensive network of non-viable urban agglomerations. The Bolsheviks made the country “colder.” Using a “temperature per capita” index (TPC), Hill and Gaddy show how heroic development projects encouraged or forced millions of people to move to places that should not have become major population centers. While some of this was attributable to Stalin’s penchant for coercion and the GULAG, the mentality both preceded and outlasted that one individual. Hill and Gaddy demonstrate that some of the most economically irrational development took place in the Brezhnev era. Rather than being an advantage, the size and climate of Russia’s eastern territory impose enormous transportation and infrastructure costs. Russian cities in Siberia and the Far East are too large, too remote, and too disconnected from each other and from markets to be viable without enormous subsidies. The most tragic aspect of the story Hill and Gaddy tell is the prevalence of the view that Soviet planning was qualitatively superior to capitalism because it did not need to take account of economic factors. Soviet planners could put large cities in frozen regions far from other infrastructure because they were not hampered by considerations of cost, profit, or returns on the investment. Within these cities, infrastructure was constructed with no attention to energy conservation, transport costs, or environmental damage. The result was a distribution of people and industry that increasingly undermined the Soviet economy and now poses gargantuan dilemmas for Russian leaders: “Soviet policymakers did not merely ignore the cold in their economic planning; they actively challenged it” (p. 34). This theme is elaborated in Chapter 5, where Hill and Gaddy show how the gigantic size of Siberia provided a cushion allowing Soviet planners to ignore their errors for decades. When they finally began to realize the extent of the costs in the 1970s and 1980s, the magnitude of what was needed to correct the distortions had become so daunting that many

Workers’ Faculties and the Development of Science Cadres in the First Decade of Soviet Power

Western governments’ science policies do not generally encompass the total national educational policy. The extent to which universities will allow themselves to be guided by governmental concerns in formulating their admissions policies varies greatly in the West. Government policies on the one hand depend on the relations between universities and the state, and on the other hand on the relations between individuals and the state. Even when serious national needs are identified, government policies tend to take the form of encouraging societal and market forces in education, rather than directing activity from above. In socialist societies, where the state monopoly over education precludes alternatives and education is regarded as an instrument of social policy, the relationship of the education system to science policy becomes more complex.