How Russia Really Works

The Soviet Union’s demise in 1991 spawned in the West a mini-industry of prescriptive books, articles, and conferences presuming to instruct Russia on how to build a democratic capitalist government, economy and society. Few of these prescriptions, however, offered insight into how Russia actually functioned at the time, how the societal gears meshed and people interacted. In their here-to-there fervor, they neglected the “here” in favor of the “there.” And they simply assumed much of the “in-between.”