Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Patterns of Russian Political Development
- 2 Soviet Legacies for Post-Soviet Russia
- 3 The 1990‘s in Russia: A New Time of Troubles?
- 4 Russia's “Neopatrimonial” Political System, 1992–2004
- 5 The Russian 1990s in Comparative Perspective
- 6 What Future for Russia? Liberal Economics and Illiberal Geography
- Conclusions
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Patterns of Russian Political Development
- 2 Soviet Legacies for Post-Soviet Russia
- 3 The 1990‘s in Russia: A New Time of Troubles?
- 4 Russia's “Neopatrimonial” Political System, 1992–2004
- 5 The Russian 1990s in Comparative Perspective
- 6 What Future for Russia? Liberal Economics and Illiberal Geography
- Conclusions
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Foreigners are unwilling to invest money in those areas of the Russian economy ‘which we want them to invest in [that is, national infrastructure and science-intensive industries]; [and] we do not let foreign companies invest in those areas they want to invest in [that is, natural resources].
– Aleksandr Livshits, Deputy General Director of the Russian Aluminum Company.Summing Up
It is with justifiable trepidation that one attempts projections as to what may happen in Russia over the coming years. We could have an amusing time solely devoted to reviewing previous such attempts and comparing the forecasts with the outcomes. To save time, let us just recall Franklin D. Roosevelt's words to a joint session of Congress upon his return from the Yalta Conference in February 1945: “We are going to get along with the Russians just fine!”
The memorable failures in speaking of the future derive more from failures of imagination than failures of analysis of existing factors. It is the intervention of discontinuous change that tends to falsify the linear projection of existing trends into the future, however ably such a projection might be made. Meteorology rather than calculus seems to be the right metaphor. All of us have 1989 (the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe), 1990 (the unification of Germany), and 1991 (the peaceful disintegration of the USSR) in mind, of course.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- How Russia Is Not RuledReflections on Russian Political Development, pp. 239 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005