The German publisher Ibidem Verlag published a book of M-Center researchers in “Politics and Society in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods” series—The Russian Way: Ideas, Interests, Institutions, Illusions. The book is printed in English.
The authors of the publication, Dmitry Travin, Vladimir Gelman, and Otar Margania, are trying to determine the causes of contradictory and ambiguous results that were the result of political and economic reforms that began in post-Soviet Russia at the end of the twentieth century. The new economic environment and governance mechanisms of the time were and are being severely criticized.
Were these developments unavoidable for Russia due to specific factors grounded in the country’s previous experiences? Or were they an intended result of actions taken by the leaders of the country during the last few decades?
The authors of this book share neither a deterministic approach, which implies that Russia is bound to fail because of the nature of its economic and political evolution, nor a voluntarist approach, which implies that these failures were caused only by the incompetence and/or malicious intentions of its leaders. Instead, this study offers a different framework for the analysis of political and economic developments in present-day Russia. It is based on four ‘i’s—ideas, interests, institutions, and illusions.