Mission Impossible? The IMF and the failure of the market transition in Russia

Review of International Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 5, 1999, Pages 183-200

  Rutland, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85007848165     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210599001837     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See my ‘Russia's Flawed Market Transition’, Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association annual convention, Washington DC 28-31 August 1997.
2. On the issue of predicting the demise of the USSR see Michael Cox (ed.), Rethinking the Soviet Collapse: Sovietology, The Death of Communism and the New Russia (London: Cassell Pinter, 1998).
3. See Philip Hanson, ‘What Sort of Capitalism in Russia?’ Communist Economies and Economic Transformation, 9:1 (1997), pp. 27-42.
4. See Strobe Talbott, ‘US must lead Strategic Partnership with post-Soviet Reform’, US Department of State Dispatch, 4:17 (26 April 1993).
5. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘The Premature Partnership’, Foreign Affairs, 73:2 (1994), pp. 67-82.
6. The growing pessimism about Russian economic reform can be found in ‘Russia's Reforms in Trouble’, The Economist, 22 November 1997, and.
7. ‘Russia's Crisis: Could it Lead to Fascism?’, The Economist, 11 July 1998.
8. For an official American response to the Russian crisis at the end of the 1990s see Strobe Talbott, ‘Dealing with Russia in a Time of Troubles’, The Economist, 21 November 1998.
9. See my ‘The IMF: Savior or Sinner?’ OMRI Analytical Brief, no. 10, 1996.
10. For an early version of this argument see Jeffrey Sachs, ‘The Reformers’ Tragedy’, New York Times, 23 January 1994.
11. For a detailed discussion of the IMF and Russia see Nigel Gould-Davies and Ngaire Woods, ‘Russia and the IMF’, International Affairs, 73:1 (1999), pp. 1-22.
12. See Peter Truscott, Russia First: Breaking With The West (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997).
13. According to one seasoned Russian observer there was little the West could ever do in Russia: Russia's problems were largely of its own making. See Georgii Arbatov, ‘Neo-Bolsheviks of the IMF’, The New York Times, 7 May 1992.
14. See Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 65–112.
15. Martin Malia, ‘In Russia, the Liberal Western Model Has Failed’, International Herald Tribune, 5-6 September 1998.
16. For a highly critical discussion of the specific American role in post-communist Russia, see Stephen Cohen, ‘America's Failed Crusade in Russia’, The Nation, 28 February 1994, and.
17. ‘Transition or Tragedy’, The Nation, 30 December 1996.
18. Two American observers who were not shocked by Russia's failure to make the transition were, Marshall I. Goldman, Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia have not Worked (New York: Norton, 1994).
19. and Robert V. Daniels, Russia's Transformation: Snapshots of a Crumbling System (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 149-210.
20. For a discussion of the crisis, see Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich (eds.), The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (London: Routledge, 1992).
21. For a good description of the situation in Russia in the early 1990s see Bruce Clark, An Empire's New Clothes: The End of Russia's Liberal Dream (London: Vintage 1995).
22. For a guide to China's road to economic reform see Peter Nolan and Dong Fureng (eds.), The Chinese Economy and its Future: Achievements and Problems of Post-Mao Reform (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 1990).
23. President Clinton was clear in his own mind however that there would be no Marshall Plan for Russia. See his important speeches, ‘A strategic alliance with Russian reform’, US Department of State Dispatch, 5 April 1993, and ‘New democratic partnership between the United States and Russia’, US Department of State Dispatch, 12 April 1993.
24. The problems of implementing economic reform in the former Soviet Union and Russia are discussed in Hillel Ticktin, Origins of the Crisis in the USSR (New York, M. E. Sharpe, 1992).
25. See Clifford Gaddy, The Price of the Past: Russia's Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1998).
26. In Nigel Gould-Davies and Ngaire Woods, ‘Russia and the IMF’, International Affairs, pp. 1-2.
27. Harold James, International Monetary Co-operation Since Bretton Woods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
28. On Poland, see Jeffrey Sachs, Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).
29. For a more sympathetic account of Clinton's policy towards post-communist Russia, see Michael Cox, ‘ The necessary partnership? The Clinton presidency and post-Soviet Russia’, International Affairs, 70:4 (1994), pp. 635-658.
30. How successful this was is examined by Peter Reddaway in ‘Visit to a Maelstrom’, The New York Times, 10 January 1994.
31. See Nigel Gould-Davies and Ngaire Woods, ‘Russia and the IMF’, International Affairs, p. 2.
32. See Michael Camdessus, ‘Russia's Transformation Efforts at a Turning Point’, IMF Press Release, 29 March 1995.
33. See World Bank Development Report: From Plan to Market (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996).
34. Non-Communist Russia's exports however continued to be very ‘Soviet’ in nature: about 45 per cent in any one year being in oil and gas and 15 per cent in metals. Moreover, the revenues earned privately from the sale of these commodities were not reinvested back into their respective industries. For a critique see Yurii Yeremenko, “Bessmyslennost’ eksporta dlya Rossii’ {Exports are senseless for Russia], Ekonomichekaya Gazeta, no. 33, 1996, pp. 2-3.
35. See Roman Frydman and Andrzej Rapanczynski, et al., The Privatization Process in Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States (Budapest, Central European University Press, 1993).
36. For an uncritical but revealing examination of this self-serving notion see Maxim Boycko, Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny, Privatizing Russia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
37. I have explored this issue in more detail in my ‘Russia's Flawed Democracy’, Current History, October 1998.
38. Sarah Ashwin, Russian Workers: The Anatomy of Patience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
39. See Simon Clarke, New Forms of Employment and Household Survival Strategies in Russia (Coventry: Centre for Comparative Labour Studies, 1999).
40. See also Anders Aslund (ed.), The post-Soviet Economy: Soviet and Western Perspectives (London: Pinter, 1992).
41. For a more positive assessment see Anders Aslund, Russia's Economic Transformation in the 1990s (London: Pinter, 1997).
42. Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes, ‘Beyond the Bailout: Time to face Reality’, Foreign Affairs, 77 (1998), pp. 53-67.
43. For a critical examination of the consequences of privatization see Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova and Douglas Kruse, Kremlin Capitalism: The Privatization of the Russian Economy (ILR Press, Cornell University Press, 1996).
44. Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995).
45. Richard Layard and John Parker, The Coming Russian Boom (New York: The Free Press, 1996).
46. See for example Marcus Warren, ‘Russians Sleepwalking into Crisis’, The Daily Telegraph (London) 18 August, 1987.
47. Vladimir Popov, ‘Will Russia achieve fast economic growth?’, Communist Economies and Economic Transformation, 19:4, 1998, pp. 421-449.
48. Mark Franchetti and Peter Millar in The Sunday Times (London), 30 August 1998.
49. George Friedman, ‘Russian Economic Failure Invites a New Stalinism’, International Herald Tribune, 11 September 1998.
50. Adrian Karatnycky, ‘The Rise of Russia's Third Force—Gorbachevism’, International Herald Tribune, 15 September 1998.
51. ‘How Russia's Market Set Off a Global Chain Reaction’, The Wall Street Journal Europe, 22 September 1998.
52. See my ‘IMF Meeting Weighs Results of Past Seven Years’, Jamestown Foundation Monitor, 1 December 1998.
53. See Charlotte Denny, ‘Mountains of Debts’, The Guardian (London), 6 August 1999.
54. Reuters, 2 June 1999.
55. The Washington Post, 4 April 1999.