Soviet &
Post-Soviet Politics and Political Economy
17.571
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Prof. David M. Woodruff
Department of Political Science
e-mail: woodruff@mit.edu
Office: E53-425
Office hours: by appointment
The focus of this course (its title notwithstanding) is
Soviet and post-Soviet Russian political economy, or the politics of the
economy. Although this is unabashedly
an "area studies" course, readings have been selected to emphasize
themes relevant to the broader tradition of comparative politics and
comparative political economy; relevant theoretical material is also
presented. The course is split
approximately evenly between studying the Soviet period and Russian political
economy since 1992. The historical
portions of the course are designed with a view to emphasizing those topics of
most enduring relevance for understanding unfolding changes.
Above all, participants in the seminar are expected to come to class ready for intensive, argumentative discussion of the assigned readings. The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
1. One 5-6 page paper analyzing one or more of the readings for a particular session. This paper has a FIRM DEADLINE of the day before the session, and may be delivered to the professor by e-mail. Please prepare a 5-10 minute presentation on your topic for class. Please look over the topics on the syllabus (later sessions do not have full readings) and have first and second choices of topics you will be interested in writing on by class on September 11th, so that we can avoid excessive clustering. You are also welcome to choose to write for September 11th. If you do, please send me an e-mail.
2. One 8-10 page paper discussing a supplementary reading for one of the sessions in light of the assigned readings for that session or other materials you find relevant. (NOTE: Undergraduates may substitute a second 5-6 page paper on the readings for a particular session if they wish.) I have not placed these supplementary reading books on reserve, so you may check them out; if you have trouble locating any of them, please let me know.
Students may choose whether they wish to write a 20-30 page final research paper on a topic approved by the instructor, or if they prefer a three-hour, closed-book final exam on a date to be determined by the registrar’s office. Questions on the final exam will be drawn from a list handed out in advance.
The final grade will be based on class participation (25%), the short paper (15%), the long paper (25%), and the final or research paper (35%). Grades are assigned as letters and then combined using the above weights and following numerical equivalents: A+=4.3, A=4, A-=3.7, B+=3.3, B=3, etc.
Participation grading will not be highly differentiated. Regular attendance guarantees a B, infrequent participation a B+. Any student who participates regularly will receive an A-; thought-provoking participation will earn an A or A+.
Standards for
grading the papers are as follows:
A: Excellent thesis, excellent execution
A-: Interesting to excellent thesis, good to excellent execution
B+: Good thesis, good execution
B: Summary of others' thoughts (no original thesis!)
B-: Poor summary of others' thoughts
C+ and below: Increasingly inadequate thought and effort
Students registered from other institutions should note that MIT does not report plus or minus grades.
This course has no formal prerequisites. However, many readings assume a working knowledge of Soviet and recent Russian history. If you find them tough going for this reason, you may want to read the suggested Nove and Fitzpatrick books (on the Soviet period), or simply the relevant Encyclopedia Britannica articles (available on-line at MIT). Many readings also assume some knowledge of micro- or macroeconomics. Although I will try to provide relevant economics background in class, don’t hesitate to ask me for background readings if you are finding these arguments tough going. Bear in mind that a few minutes with Google will answer most questions you might have; if you’re interested in the topic, don’t let a lack of background stop you.
Readings will be heavy, around 200 pages a week. A copy of the course reader, at present with readings for the first four weeks only, will be on reserve at the Dewey library in E53. If you wish to purchase a copy, it is available at MIT’s CopyTech in the basement of E52. The remainder of the readings will be determined by late September.
The following (excellent!) book is out of
print. One copy will be on reserve at
the Dewey Library; you may also want to try to find it used on-line, but start
right away since we will be reading it relatively early.
Gustafson, Thane. Crisis Amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet Energy under Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.
These
books will be available for purchase at the Coop:
Hewett, Edward A. Reforming the Soviet Economy : Equality Versus Efficiency. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990.
Shearer, David R. Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Woodruff, David. Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Hedlund, Stefan. Russia's "Market" Economy : A Bad Case of Predatory Capitalism. London: UCL, 1999.
Gaidar, Yegor, and Karl Otto Pohl. Russian Reform/International Money: Lionel Robbins Lectures, vol. 5. Cambridge and London; MIT Press, 1995.
Shleifer, Andrei, and Daniel Treisman. Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.
Seabright, Paul. The Vanishing Rouble: Barter Networks and Non-Monetary Transactions in Post-Soviet Societies. Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Murrell, Peter. Assessing the Value of Law in Transition Economies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
Recommended
Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (out of print).
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. 2nd ed. Oxford: New York : Oxford University Press, 2001.
September 4th
Introduction to the class.
September 11th After the
Revolution
For background: Fitzpatrick, Russian Revolution 1-120 (the readings for this session take a lot of historical knowledge for granted; this is a quick read if the period is new to you.)
*Gerschenkron, Alexander. "Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective." In The Sociology of Economic Life, ed. Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg, 111-130. Boulder: Westview, 1992.
*Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. 29-135
*Rosenberg, Alexander. "The Problem of Market Relations and the State in Revolutionary Russia." Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 2 (1994): 356-396.
Shearer, David R. Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. 3-52.
Woodruff, David. Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 21-34
Erlich, Alexander. The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Мау, В. А. Реформы и догмы, 1914-1929: очерки становления хозяйственной системы совесткого тоталитаризма. Moscow: Izd-vo "Delo", 1993.
September 18th The Great Break: Industrialization
and Collectivization
For background: Fitzpatrick 120-147.
*Lewin, Moshe. The Making of the Soviet System. New York: Pantheon, 1985. 91-120, 209-240.
*Dohan, Michael R. "The Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky 1927/28-1934." Slavic Review 35, no. 4 (1976): 603-635.
Shearer, Industry, State, and Society, 53-107, 167-186
*Stalin, Joseph, Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, L. Kosheleva, and Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. 168-169, 175, 200-201, 209.
*Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 72-105
Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. (The rest, or, if you prefer, just Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 6).
Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932 Soviet and East European Studies. Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Graziosi, Andrea. The Great Soviet Peasant War. Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University, 1996.
September 25th A Disorderly “Order”
*Lewin, Moshe. Russia--USSR--Russia: The Drive and Drift of a Superstate. Detroit: New Press, 1993. 114-128.
*Gregory, Paul R., and Aleksei Tikhonov. "Central Planning and Unintended Consequences: Creating the Soviet Financial System, 1930-1939." Journal of Economic History 60, no. 4 (2000): 1017-1040.
*Kornai, Janos. "The Soft Budget Constraint." Kyklos 39, no. 1 (1986): 3-30.
Woodruff, Money Unmade, 35-55.
Hewett, Edward A. Reforming the Soviet Economy : Equality Versus Efficiency. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988: 94-220.
If you wish to write a paper on the supplementary reading for this week, choose either the three [brilliant!] Grossman articles or one of the books.
Grossman, Gregory. "Scarce Capital and Soviet Doctrine." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 67, no. 3 (1953): 311-343.
________. "The Structure and Organization of the Soviet Economy." Slavic Review 21, no. 2 (1962): 203-222.
________. "Gold and the Sword: Money in the Soviet Command Economy." In Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron, ed. Henry Rosovsky, 204-236. New York: Wiley, 1966.
Andreev-Khomiakov, Gennady. Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin's Russia: A Memoir. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997 (or Russian original.)
Berliner, Joseph S. Factory and Manager in the USSR Russian Research Center Studies 27. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.
October 2 The System in Senescence
Gustafson, Thane. Crisis Amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet Energy under Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. 2-99, 263-274, 284-319.
*Schroeder, Gertrude E. "Organizations and Hierarchies: The Perennial Search for Solutions." In Reorganization and Reform in the Soviet Economy, ed. Susan J. Linz and William Moskoff, 3-22. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1988.
*Huang, Yasheng S. "Information, Bureaucracy, and Economic Reforms in China and the Soviet Union." World Politics 47, no. 1 (1994): 102-134.
Shmelev, N. P., and Vladimir Mikhailovich Popov. The Turning Point: Revitalizing the Soviet Economy. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
October 9 Images of Soviet Politics
George Breslauer, “In Defense of Sovietology,” Post-Soviet Affairs 8, no. 3 (July-September 1992): 197-238
T.H. Rigby, “Crypto-Politics,” Survey 50, no. 1 (1964): 183-194
Stephen F. Cohen, “The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union,” Slavic Review 38, no. 2 (June 1979): 187-202
Kenneth Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 121-158
Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, “Ethnonationalism and Political Stability - the Soviet Case,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984): 555-580
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Against the Grain: An Autobiography (New York: Summit Books, 1990) (or Russian original)
October 16 Gorbachev and the Dissolution
of the Soviet Economy
Yegor Gaidar and Karl Otto Pohl, Russian Reform/International Money: Lionel Robbins Lectures, vol. 5. Cambridge and London; MIT Press, 1995): 1-26.
Stefan Hedlund, Russia's "Market" Economy : A Bad Case of Predatory Capitalism (London: UCL, 1999): 77-102.
*Juliet Ellen Johnson, A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000): 26-63.
*Simon Johnson and Heidi Kroll, “Managerial Strategies for Spontaneous Privatization,” Soviet Economy 7, no. 4 (1991): 281-316.
David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999): 56-78.
*Burawoy, Michael, and Krotov, Pavel. 1992. The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism. American Sociological Review, 57: 16-38.
Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich, The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System: An Insiders' History (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998)
October 23 Conceiving Economic Transition
Yegor Gaidar and Karl Otto Pohl, Russian Reform/International Money: Lionel Robbins Lectures, vol. 5. Cambridge and London; MIT Press, 1995): 26-54.
*Yegor Gaidar, “[Reforms in Russia.],” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 44, no. 33 (1992): 4-7.
*Chaudhry, Kiren Aziz. 1993. The Myths of the Market and the Common History of Late Developers. Politics & Society, 21 (3): 245.
*Kahler, Miles. 1990. Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives. In Economic Crisis and Policy Choice, edited by Joan M. Nelson, 33-61. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
*Joan M. Nelson, “The Politics of Economic Transformation: Is Third World Experience Relevant in Eastern Europe?,” World Politics 45, no. 3 (April 1993): 433-463
*Joel S. Hellman,
“Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist
Transitions,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998 1998): 203-234
Yegor Gaidar, Days of Defeat and Victory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999) (or Russian original.)
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2nd Beacon Paperback ed (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001 [1944])
October 30 Historical Overview of the
Transition Period; Early Efforts to Tame Inflation
Stefan Hedlund, Russia's "Market" Economy : A Bad Case of Predatory Capitalism (London: Ucl, 1999), 144-266
Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 1-20, 39-51
David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 6-15, 79-109.
Дубов,
Ю. А. Большая
пайка: роман. 2-ое издание,
сокр.
авторская
редакция. (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000).
November 6 The Monetary and Nonmonetary
Economies
Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 53-112
David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 146-176
Paul Seabright, The Vanishing Rouble: Barter Networks and Non-Monetary Transactions in Post-Soviet Societies (Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 114-146, 259-298, 318-344
Clifford G. Gaddy and Barry William Ickes, Russia's Virtual Economy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2002)
November 13 The Crisis of 1998
Randall W. Stone, Lending Credibility : The International Monetary Fund and the Post-Communist Transition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2002), 116-168.
David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 177-202
Stefan Hedlund, Russia's "Market" Economy : A Bad Case of Predatory Capitalism (London: UCL, 1999): 225-266.
Алексашенко,
Сергей.
Битва за
рубль: взгляд
участника
событий (Moscow: Alma Mater, 1999)
November 20 Privatization and Corporations
Simon Clarke and Veronika Kabalina, “Privatisation and the Struggle for Control of the Enterprise,” in David Lane, ed., Russia in Transition: Politics, Privatisation and Inequality (London: Longman, 1995).
Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 21-38
Katharina Pistor, “Company Law and Corporate Governance in Russia,” in Jeffrey D. Sachs and Katharina Pistor, eds., The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia (Boulder: Westview, 1997), 165-187
Juliet Johnson, “Russia's Emerging Financial-Industrial Groups,” Post-Soviet Affairs 13, no. 4 (October-December 1997): 333-365
B. Black, R. Kraakman and A. Tarassova, “Russian Privatization and Corporate Governance: What Went Wrong?,” Stanford Law Review 52, no. 6 (July 2000): 1731-1808
A. Radygin, “The Redistribution of Property Rights in Post-Privatization Russia,” Problems of Economic Transition 42, no. 11 (March 2000): 6-34
Supplemental Reading
Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova and Douglas Kruse, Kremlin Capitalism: The Privatization of the Russian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1997).
Maxim Boycko, Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny, Privatizing
Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).
November 27 Economic Legality and
Illegality
Kathryn Hendley, “Legal Development in Post-Soviet Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 13, no. 3 (July-September 1997): 228-251
Peter Murrell, Assessing the Value of Law in Transition Economies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001): 20-93, 229-248 (Hendley, Hendley et. al., Frye).
Vadim Radaev, “Corruption and Violence in Russian Business in the Late 1990s,” in Alena V. Ledeneva and Marina Kurkchiyan, eds., Economic Crime in Russia (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000), 63-82
Caroline Humphrey, “Dirty Business, 'Normal Life', and the Dream of Law,” in Alena V. Ledeneva and Marina Kurkchiyan, eds., Economic Crime in Russia (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000), 177-190.
Supplemental Reading
Timothy Frye, Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Market Institutions in Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Латынина,
Юлия. Oхота на
изюбря (Москва:
Олма-Пресс, 1999).
December 4 Center-Regional Relations
*Jeffrey Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 132-188
*Vladimir Gel'man, “Regime Transition, Uncertainty and Prospects for Democratisation: The Politics of Russia's Regions in a Comparative Perspective,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 6 (1999): 939-956
Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 113-136
PONARS Policy Memos: available on-line at http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm
Read the following memos: 161, 231, 241, 282, 283, 284
December 11 Russia Since the Crisis
*Peter Rutland, “Putin's Path to Power,” Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 4 (October-December 2000): 313-354
*William Tompson, “Putin's Challenge: The Politics of Structural Reform in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 6 (2002): 933-957
Daniel Treisman, “Russia Renewed?” Foreign Affairs (November-December 2000). http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20021101faessay9992/daniel-treisman/russia-renewed.html
PONARS Policy Memos: available on-line at http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm
Read the following memos: 238, 253, 255, 273, 274