The ethnographies collected here offer a surprising and compelling picture of change in Russia and Eastern Europe found in no other book to date. Looking at the everyday processes by which individuals and groups forge new lives, the authors challenge the idea that we can understand this transformation by the predictable models-whether capitalism, post-socialism, modernity, or postmodernity.The collection brings together a wide-ranging group of authors from sociology, anthropology, ...

George Soros is one of the world's leading philanthropists. Over the past 30 years, he has provided more than 7 billion to his network of foundations, known collectively as the Open Society Institute, for projects around the world and in the United States.In this e-book, Soros writes in detail for the first time about his vision for philanthropy. "I have always been leery of philanthropy," he writes, "Philanthropy is supposed to be devoted to the benefit of others,...

Transitions from socialism to capitalism are complex, both in theory and practice. Russian Economic Reform enables the reader to come to a much better understanding of these momentous changes, by providing a clear and accessible account of the major features of transition. It argues that attempts to portray the reform process is a disaster are misconceived, because they fail to take account of just how badly the pre-reform economy was doing. Many of the problems that are emerging ...

During the Soviet era, blat—the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures—was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s—from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about on...

What makes countries rich? What makes countries poor? Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland seeks to answer these questions, and many more, through a study of one of the biggest, and least heard about, economic success stories. Over the last thirty years Poland has transitioned from a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country to unexpectedly join the ranks of the world's high-income countries. Europe's Growth Champion is about the le...

The book reveals the interconnection between social, cultural and political protest movements and social and economic changes in a post-communist country like Russia still dominated by bureaucratic rulers and "oligarchs" controlling all basic industries and mining activities. Those interests are also dominating Russia’s foreign policy and explain why Russia did not succeed in becoming an integral part of Europe. The latter is, at least, wished by many Russian citizens.

Post-Communist Russia is an instance of the phenomenon of authoritarian modernization project, which is perceived as a set of policies intended to achieve a high level of economic development, while political freedoms remain beyond the current modernization agenda or are postponed to a distant future. Why did Russia (unlike many countries of post-Communist Europe) pursue authoritarian modernization after the Soviet collapse? What is the ideational agenda behind this project and why does it...

From Communists to Foreign Capitalists explores the intersections of two momentous changes in the late twentieth century: the fall of Communism and the rise of globalization. Delving into the economic change that accompanied these shifts in central and Eastern Europe, Nina Bandelj presents a pioneering sociological treatment of the process of foreign direct investment (FDI). She demonstrates how both investors and hosts rely on social networks, institutions, politics, and cultural...

This timely book explores Russia’s political development since the collapse of the USSR and how inextricably it has been bound up with economic change. Tracing the evolution of Russia’s political economy, leading scholars consider how it may continue to develop going forward. They assess the historical legacies of the Soviet period, showing how—despite policies implemented after the USSR dissolved in 1991—there are ongoing bitter battles over property and state revenues, over land, and ove...

Moscow in Movement is the first exhaustive study of social movements, protest, and the state-society relationship in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Beginning in 2005 and running through the summer of 2013, the book traces the evolution of the relationship between citizens and their state through a series of in-depth case studies, explaining how Russians mobilized to defend human and civil rights, the environment, and individual and group interests: a process that culminated in the drama...

In the 1980s and 90s, renowned Polish economist Tadeusz Kowalik played a leading role in the Solidarity movement, struggling alongside workers for an alternative to "really-existing socialism" that was cooperative and controlled by the workers themselves. In the ensuing two decades, "really-existing" socialism has collapsed, capitalism has been restored, and Poland is now among the most unequal countries in the world. Kowalik asks, how could this happen in a country that once had the large...

With the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, it seemed that market capitalism had triumphed and that democracy might replace authoritarian regimes. Economic reformers in the former Eastern Bloc rushed to liberalize prices and transfer state assets to private hands. They assumed that private owners in a market setting would have no choice but to behave rationally_that is, to invest in restructuring privatized enterprises so as to maximize profits. They also assumed that these owners would per...