OP# 274

RUSSIA AND THE RECOMPOSITION OF POWER: PARADIGM THE PARADIGM BEYOND THE DREAM STA OF THE GOOD STA TE by Peter J. Stavrakis
on a far more somber re l t : e g t c n aiy ih osecutive years of economic contraction, decrepit and ineff c e t s a e i s i u i n , iin tt ntttos pervasive criminalization of state and society, widespread public privation and ensuing withdrawal from society; and, a physically enfeebled executive whose chief skill consisted in shuff i g e i e t p l n l t s o re serve his own political stability. Even the most optimistic observers of Russia concede that success has proved elusive and transition had produced a failed state, spent society and a pathetically selfs r i g p l t c l e i e T e re l t o t i evn oiia lt. h aiy f hs srysaeo a o r t t f ffairs was brought home when Anatolii Chubaislong hailed by the assistance community as the linchpin of the bold young reformersheaped praise upon Sergei Stepashin when the latter was appointed as Russias fourth Prime Minist r i l t l m re than a year. I l s t a e n ite o n es hn ninety days, the former head of the Interior Ministry found himself replaced by former spymaster Vladimir Putin, who promptly set about campaigning for the presidency a l r s e by launching a withering military a us campaign to reclaim Chechnya. While the contribution of U.S. and W estern assistance to this outcome has p roved to be a sensitive and popular subject for those in the policy world, it has not provided for an enriching scholarly debate. Adhere t o t e reform path ns f h encouraged by the We t a s rgue that despite W estern institutions underestimating the enormity of the task and the capacity of Russian society to embrace reform, the fundamental objective of breaking with the communist past has been achieved. Oppos t o t reform retains considerable iin o potency, and as long as these holdovers f the past remain, Russia is destined for rom silg t l reater pain and instability (Malia, 1999). The blame for failure i t e f re s h re o squarely on the shoulders of the old communist system and its remnants. The contrary view, while not absolving communism of its responsibility in this historical tragedy,a rgues that the Wet s made a fundamental error in crafting an

W e should have learned long ago that Russia has a talent for seducing the We t s s optimistic expectations of the future o l , ny to confound us a short time later. S i w s o t a that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the buoyant celebration that accompanied it, should have been tempered by the view that the new millennium would inevitably see Russia complicate the soothing, simple vision of a post-cold war community of liberal, free market societies. Instead, scholarly analysis initially chose to r eflect the optimism by linking developments in Eastern and Central Europe to the democratic transitions sweeping through L t n America (Przeworski, 1991). The ai former communist world was firmly linked t tep o h rogress of societies that held much p romise for the future. Indeed, comparing Russia and its companion successor states t a region as troubled as Africa seemed o positively mean-spirited at the beginning of the decade. While Russia might have a r ougher road to travel to enjoy the benefits of democratic governance and the wealth o tef f h ree market, the West viewed this as associated more with the enormity of communist deconstruction than anything intrinsic to Russian culture o s c e y. Once r oit teisiuinlifat h n t t t o a n r s ructure of communism were dismantled and the countrys nuclear monopoly eliminated, Russian economy and society would quickly r espond to the benefits of embracing the 1 goa lbrlo l b l i e a rder. Equal optimism abounded in the Western assistance community, as bilateral and multilateral aid agencies realized their historic opportunity to help guide Russia to the Promised Land of free market liberal democracy. But the dramatic collapse of Russian capitalism in August 1998 and the chaotic and internecine political struggles in the spring of 1999 have brought home to the W e t t e re l t o R s i f i e t a s s h aiy f usas ald rni tion. Some commentators continue to stre s s the successes of democratic reform (McFaul, 1999), as doubtless do the admini t a o s responsible for implementing srtr f reign aid. But these arguments now fall o

assistance policy based on values and institutions alien to the terrain of Russian p l t c l c l u . T e result was an inevio i i a u t re h table perversion of reform and the discrediting of Western institutions and values (Cohen, 1999). Russia is a messa vast landscape of despair, resentment, and axeylte n i t i t red with the remnants of a dysfunctional system and stillborn institut o a reforms. Western funds elevated inl only a few to the exalted status of re former, as Russias economy dwindled, its population suffre a d i s p l t c l e i e e d n t oiia lts wasted precious time slicing and re l c n a siig shrinking pie of social wealth. F rom a scholarly perspective, however, t e c n roversy over the ro e o h ot l f assistance is intellectually barre .2 The n lrger problem is that we still have no a sense of the overall direction of Russias development. Policymakers are l f w t et ih tef h rustrating realization that they know only what Russia is notneither communist nor liberal democratic. This naturally leads to the question of what Russia is becoming? Can we discern amidst the chaos and despair of contemporary Russia any familiar directionality to its development? I ronically, i i h re t a a c o e t s e ht ls examination of the disappointing contribution of Western assistance can adumbrate the outline of Russias future development. And its trajectory leads beyond the Good (i.e., liberal democratic) state and hopedfrlbrlf o i e a ree market society toward a h rd road converging with the political ti and economic pathologies in many African s c e i s 3 Indeed, there a striking paraloite. re lels between the Russian and African cases in terms of the criminalization of the economy, widespread corruption, weak legal and administrative institutions, and the proclivity for personal rule. Not surprisingly, then, some of the prevailing approaches in African studies constitute a useful theoretical context for comprehending the modalities of post-Soviet experience. The emerging Russian polity will r eflect the amalgamation of traditional authority in new socioeconomic surroundings. Russia is headed not for liberal democracy, as Fritz Ermath has observed (1999), but some form of weak irrespon-

sible state authority over a disordered society that could retain considerableif p recariousstability. How was it the case that Western e fforts to move Russia toward the higher g round of free market liberal democracy a t a l resulted in convergence with culy c i i a a p c s o African experience? The rtcl set f answer to this question is presented in several parts: 1) Explanation of the critical intellectual and policy moments when American and international assistance p rograms played a cru i l role in moving ca Russia toward t e h rd ro d 2 A b i f h ti a. ) re analysis of how foreign assistance came to encourage the political and economic pathologies that emerged in Russian r eform. 3) A description of the common pathologies in (many) African societies and Russia. 4) Reflections on how enduring d ffrence between the Russian and African i e case may lead to vastly diffrentand far e moret roublingoutcomes for the former Soviet Union and the broader vision of a liberal world order. Western I. Critical Junctures in Western Assistance: Intellectual Errors and Policy Blunders The central intellectual problem in American assistance to the former Soviet Union stemmed from a weak (at best) conception of how reform might improve social development.4 The United States victory in the Cold War permitted it to assume a casual attitude, which only contributed intellectual sloppiness to its assistance paradigm. Simply put, we had no need to be efficient because there was no longer a competing social system that sruggling societies could turn to for t support. International aid shed its geopolitical component and consisted solely of what Grant and Nijman termed its modernist component (Escobar, 1995; Grant & Nijman, 1998). Modernism in aid came to signify a belief in the uninterrupted p rogre s f s rom traditional, authoritarian, and irrational society to the haven of the p rofessional, stable, and democratic W estern state. The great ideological contest of the cold war had ended in the decisive victory of the We t l a i g l t l d u t s, evn ite ob (supposedly) as to the objectives of interna-

tional assistance: linear development toward t e e d o l b r l f h n f i e a ree-market democracy. Subsequent events have p rofoundly shaken Western scholarly faith in this simplistic modernist approach to the post-Soviet world; but the aid communityor much of itclings persistently to i t . The modernist conception of societal development permitted an international aid policy toward Russia that rested heavily on faith in the power of market f rces and trust in the essential decency of o Russian reformers. This coincidentally diminished the potential contribution of scholarship in addressing the Russian condition, as the envisioned time frame for t e re l z t o o reform was too short to h aiain f permit serious inquiry. Consequently,t e h bulk of assistance eff r s rested on the ot slender base of macroeconomic theory and its claim of a rapid transformation of the economic order; little or nothing was devoted to considering how reform could accomplish all of its objectives given the absence of suitable administrative capacity fre o ffective governance. Indeed, Russias f r t g n r t o o reformers focusedwith is eeain f the explicit knowledge and consent of external institutionson a simple formula for a speedy transition: destruction, stabilization, and construction. The principal logic embedded in this formulation f r t e t i e t e d s ruction of Soviet-era is nald h et institutions of state power to clear a path f r realizing the ostensible benefits of o market forces. Once the institutional ifat n r s ructure of the Communist state was demolished, the challenge of reform could be turned over to a new group of stabilizers who would focus on creating the conditions for stability and future e o cnomic growth. Finally, a new generation of builders (presumably those skilled at wealth creation rather than destruction) would be given the mantle of power, p roviding for the consolidation of a p roductive capitalist economy. Policymakers, especially those r esponsible for foreign aid, found the modernist paradigmwith its assumptoso lna p i n f i e r rogressreassuring: the world can indeed be molded and shaped in t e d rection of positive outcomes. Unforh i

tunately, t i p h s roved an intellectually misguided view that provided only a false sense of security. In a significant number of African societies, and now in the former Soviet Union, the re l t i t a p a i y s h t reexisting p l t c l c l u remains suff c e t y o i i a u t re iinl powerful to overwhelm even the best of W estern intentions. Grant and Nijman re e fr to this phenomenon as the postmodern perspective of development, which signife p i s a rocess of social change without a blueprint, a predictable path, or even a purpose, and largely beyond the contro o l f governmental and non-governmental agencies (Grant & Nijman, 1998). Hence, Russia can absorb Western institutions and the vocabularies of macroeconomic theory y t remain unchanged in its traditional e authoritarian pro l v t e f r e i e rule. The ciiis o lt new Russia conforms neither to the We t s s d s re i a e o i , n r i i a s m l return ei d mg f t o s t ipe to the past. Western assistance providers to Russia fail, by and large, to appre i t t a cae ht rather than slipping into the past, it is actually moving forward i a d rection that n i W estern institutions and norms cannot comprehendthe tsars and their boyars have blended the dark arts of autocracy with the dismal science. A postmodernist reconfiguration of power in Russia implies that we cannot fully control the essence of development, nor can we be secure in the knowledge of what can be achieved within a given society. Consequently, a postmodern policy r esponse require g s reater complexity, a g reater infusion of resourc s a d u t e n, li mately,g a e r s . Ye a l o t e e f c o s re t r i k t l f hs atr a hostile to the bureaucratic context re within which transitions are formulated and reform strategies mapped out. Far more comforting is a strategy designed to persuade Western audiences that the images of change re l c a real change in fet teesneo sca adpltcllf i h sec f oil n oiia ie n Russia. Moreover, i w u d require a r re t ol a act of political courage for We t r i s i u sen ntttions to acknowledge that the re u t o t e r sl f hi e ot i apaelk Rsi wl fl sot ff r s n l c i e u s a i l a l h r o tef f h ree market liberal state. Such courage has not been fashionable in W estern policy circ e o l t . ls f ae Relatedly, the West has proceeded in isreform eff r s f t o t rom a false dichotomy:

tetaiinl( h r d t o a read: authoritarian) world of the past, and the democratic legal order ta i p h t t romises to usher in. This view also fist ap caeteeatct o tai a l o p re i t h l s i i y f r d t o a p l t c l c l u , a f a u ta i a i n l o i i a u t re e t re h t s t t e h a t o t e reconfiguration of power. h er f h W estern approaches have wrongly assumed that the systemic crises in Russia and African societies re l c a re e t o o fet jcin f traditional forms of domination. In re l t a i y, they are merely another turn in the cycle of perpetual instability that has characterized domestic politics. In sum, We t r a s s sen sitance institutions took advantage of the srtgcb t a e i reathing space engendered by the end of the cold war to transplant a dubious intellectual approach toward assistance onto the post-Soviet world. When the anticipated re u t f i e t sls ald o m t r a i e p l t c l realities bound them aeilz, oiia to undertake a major eff r a s i c n ro. ot t pn ot l The intellectual weakness of the W ests approach to assistance was compounded in Russia by several decisive e rors that set Russia on a course toward r underdevelopment. While assistance o iil pitee eial t teisiu ff c a s o n n rg t c l y o h n t t t o o e e t o s i w s t e d s s rous in f lcin, t a h iat privatization programthe off c a m s iil at head of Americas post-Soviet assistance e ffortthat resulted in the creation of new financial oligarchy that quickly acquired the same political ambition and style of the p reexisting elites. Indeed, U.S. policy was often appeared to operate according to the bizarre l g c t a a i i i l y u j s d s r oi ht n ntal nut iti bution of property was preferable to waiting for a more rational and equitable means of privatization, as eventually even those who benefited unfairly would be drawn by the magnetism of capitalist a t v t Yet this has been proven wrong: the c i i y. size of the Russian shadow economy has actually grown (Kosals, 1998), while the p roductivity of the open economy continues its secular decline. Even moreremarkably, American assistance off c a s g v a s l c iil ae eet g roup of Russian reformers virtually complete autonomy in designing and implementing the privatization program ( We e , 1 9 ) American assistance policy dl 99. ws i e a , n ffect, in Russian hands. This error might have been manageable, had U.S policy made a serious eff r ot

c redibly to support eff r s t c a e t e ru e o t o re t h l of law in Russia. Had legal institutions and practices been endowed with the resourc s e, skills andmost importantpolitical support required, it might have been possible to argue that oligarchic capitalism c u d a l a t b restrained by legal instituol t es e tions. But this never acquired any momentum, principally because the core o f Russian reformers tapped by American assistance officials to implement reform prevailed in their argument that times of c i i n c s i a e c rcumventing legal rss eesttd i institutions. Hence crisis management meant undermining the principles that would have moderated the evolution of a new type of unrestrained power in Russia. This harkens back to African experience, where democratic law-governed initiatives were set aside in favor of preserving p rogress in economic reform. But in Russia, t e was not even economic progre s t h re s o point to, with the result that many African states have wound up performing better than Russia in recent years. These strategic intellectual and policy weaknesses created the substratum in which the rest of the Russian tragedy unfolded. The remaining sections detail the type of political and economic dynamics emanating from this initial context and r einforce the conclusion that Western assistance has contributed in Russia to the emergence of many of the pathologies first i e t f e i African societies. dniid n Western II. Western Aid and the Shaping of the Eff t New RussiaPolitical Eff c s e W estern assistance proved important in nurturing a political practice that exacerbated the impact of economic policy and further degraded the prospects for development of state institutions. On one level, the West, with the United States in the lead, focused paramount attention on elections, political parties, and the separation of powers. While the focus on political party formation fizzled early on, America aggressively sought to implement parliamentary and presidential elections. Under the watchful eyes of hundreds of international observers (many of whom pre e red fr the comfort of their hotels to going out on the hustings) Russians went to the polls in

December 1993 and December 1995 and both times returned a parliament dominated by Communists and forc s l rgely e a h s i e t t e reform program. The centerotl o h piece was, of course, the presidential election in June 1996 in which Ye t i lsn staged a remarkable comeback to defeat Gennadi Zyuganov, his Communist opponent. Americans congratulated Russians for fre l e e t n t e r f r t ey lcig hi is p resident in history. Few seemed to be bothered by the fact that the choice was between a despot and a tsar. I rerospect, a massive international n t e ffort was required to produce the appro priate election spectacle sanctifying Russia as on track toward democracy.Ye t considerable evidence indicated the elections were f r f a rom free and fair. T e h European Institute for the Media, pointing to the overwhelming monopoly of the airwaves by pro-Ye t i f rces, concluded lsn o i i s f n l report that the elections were n t n t ia o f and fair. Moreover, Chubais did his ree best to rifle the government budget and f reign assistance funds to throw money at o t e Yeltsin campaign. The most glaring h example of this was the disappearance of a $250 million tranche from the World Bank designated for relief of the mining sector, including payment of back wages. Not a nickel materialized there i s e d , nta winding up in Yeltsin campaign coff r es (Kramer, 1 9 ) 5 The financial oligarchy 98. c reated by earlier privatization policy made no secret of its massive assistance in support of Ye t i reelection bid. What lsns they demanded in return was nothing less than a further crippling of state capacity to accommodate their personal intere t . ss The fact that the West did not pro e t ts these disturbing developments reflected the gradual emergence of the international communitys real priorities for Russian p l t c l reform. If Russia embraced the oiia r e o i o reform and made marginal htrc f substantive stepsin short, if it provided the West with an imagine of pre e t b l t snaiiy W estern agencies and governments would p ronounce Russia to be a reform success. Tesitf h h f rom substantive policy re u t t sls o appropriate genuflection before the icons of f ree market democracy proved remarkably easy for the Russian elite to do, and it

was not long before virtually every political party and organization spoke the language of reform with accomplished fluency. Only the Communistsin contrast t terp o h i redecessorsfound this a challenge. International assistance agencies also found that the ritualistic embrace of transition goals provided them with the k n o f e i i i y required to navigate id f lxblt d fficult moments in the transition, yet i without having to claim that democratization had suffred serious reverses. Hence, e Russia could now have a parliament, it could be populated with opposition forc s e, and it could even pass legislation that conflicted with the Yeltsin governments o j c i e . A srongly presidential constitubetvs t tion empowere Ye t i t c rcumvent or d lsn o i ignore such negative developments in vrulyalcss ital l ae. The Wests superficial investment in democratic institutions in Russia also meant that it would continue to tolerate endless conflict and political jostling between informal clan networks that were the essence of Russian political life. Even when the clan nature of Russian politics was publicly revealed to the West (Graham, 1995) it caused only a momentary ripple in the pressure of Western government and IFIs to cast developments in the most favorable light. Hence, Russian pltcllf aqi o i i a i e c u red a two tiered nature : the level of formal institutions that satisfied t e rhetorical and ideological demands of h W estern policy, and the level of informal c a s ruggle, where t e s r o s p l t c l ln t h eiu oiia issues wereresolved. Accountability of elites to the publicthe sine qua non of genuine democratic governmentwas the principal casualty of this system, but Western o fficials attempted to deflect this by sressing that the mere fact of elections was t a major success for Russia at this point in i s h s o y. This was the ultimate irony: the t itr fabled Potemkin Village, long the symbol of the Russian states craven attempt to obscure its political backwardness, was now embraced by the We t w t re i f T e s ih le. h style of Russian politics had thus succeeded a remarkable process of adapting to new conditions. The rhetoric and institu-

tional framework had changed, and several new clans affiliated with the We t e t red s ne the political fray; but the hankering to live above the law and resolve questions of power through semi-clandestine struggles continued unabated. The result of Western emphasis on economic reform, the presentability of p l t c l reform, paralleled by the toleraoiia tion of unreconstructed clan politics helped p roduce the quasi-state re e red to by fr Robert Jackson: endowed with juridical statehood, yet lacking the political will, institutional capacity, a d o n rganized authority to protect human rights and p rovide socioeconomic welfare (Jackson, 1990). Indeed, were one to consider Russias accomplishments against the standards expected of modern states p rovision for national defense, ensuring b road macroeconomic stability, maintaining social equity at politically manageable levels, and insuring economic growth (Mkandawire, 1999)the Russian state in 1998 had failed in all respects. And yet, despite the deplorable condition of its formal institutions, Russia nevertheless accomplished some important (albeit contested) goals, including the transfer of state property to a select entre p reneurial elite, muzzling much of the mass media and mobilizing for popular elections to provide the patina of respecta i i y required for international consumpblt tion. There o f re, the web of informal clan alliances among the Ye t i p l t c l e i e lsn oiia lt fle tevi lf b teb i l d h o d e t y h reakdown of formal state capacity. Since the essence of clan politics involves the amassing of power transcending institutional boundaries; the triumph of traditional political behavior effectively destroyed the boundaries between state, society, and economy r equired to sustain modern state institutions. With the triumph of traditional pltclsye itrainlisiuin oiia tl, nentoa ntttos were placed in the awkward position described by William Reno: implementation of transition policy rested in the hands of elites whose own power and influence would be undermined by pursuing these objectives (Reno, 1995). The primacy of informal clan politics allowed Ye t i t d v l p a s y e o ru e i lsn o eeo tl f l n

the 1990s, which was eff c i e i p e t v n reventing challenges to his authority, e e a i vn s t debilitated the pursuit of rational policy goals. In essence, Yeltsin followed the example of Zaires Seke Sese Mobutu by superimposing himself above elite politics, defining and enforc n t e rules of engageig h ment in order to balance competing clans (Schatzberg, 1988). This accounts for years o reshuff i g h s f l n i reform team, which changed its political complexion on a r egular basis. Hence, to balance off t e h influence of Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, Yeltsin tolerated Prime Minister Vi t r ko Chernomyrdin and his ally Boris Berezovsky. Then, as Chernomyrdin acquired too much presidential character, he was sacked and replaced by political neophyte Sergei Kiriyenko. The latter s appointmenthailed externally as a triumph for reformwas actually designed to stabilize domestic politics and temporarily restrain personal ambitions. Morerecently,Yeltsins erratic behavirhsic o a n reased the tempo of the pro e s cs. In Spring 1999 he sacked Prime Minister Evgenni Primakov evidently out of fear at t e l t e sg h a t r rowing popularity and willingness to attack high-level corruption in the Kremlin. Sergei Stepashin, his success r, began his tenure crippled by Ye t i o lsns maneuvers. Russias merc r a p u i l resident accordingly crippled his fourth government in little more than a year by insisting on the appointment of Nikolai Aksyonenko as First Deputy Prime Minister and depriving Stepashin of the authority to appoint his own team. With Stepashin supported by Chubais, and Aksyonenko by Berezovsky (and perhaps Roman Abramovich), the new government appeared complete. Even so, Stepashin lasted l t l m re than eighty-four days, as Ye t i ite o lsn fa e red that he nevertheless exhibited too much presidential ambition and an uncomfortable closeness to Yuri Luzhkov. T i hs occasioned another cycle in the seemingly unending Kre l n p l t c l s ruggles, as mi oiia t Ye t i s l c e f r t e p l s n e e t d o h remiership and publicly anointed him as his designated successor to the presidency. The policy dire t o o t e P t n cin f h ui government make it diff c l a b s t s e k iut t et o pa of Russia as a victory for democratization

and the consolidation of a modern state. Sure y, i s r i s c l t t a n redibility beyond any r easonable limit to describe as democratic a government that prosecutes a war in Chechnya as an election campaign strategy and prides itself on embracing a quasiimperial ord r o s c e s o t t e t ro e e f ucsin o h h n. Contemporary Russia is there o b t e f re e t r understood in the framework of Mobutustyle of governance, where enfeebled state institutions succumb to the despotic ambit o s o i s l a e And since no one in the i n f t e d r. W est would consider elevating an African despot to the status of democrat and reformer, t e i n re s n f r t h re s o a o o reating Ye t i R s i a y d ffrently. lsns usa n i e Understanding why We t r i s i u sen ntttions tolerated this patrimonial style of ru e l allows us to achieve a closure between W estern aid policy, Russian domestic p l t c , resentability and the rh t r c o oiis p eoi f r eform.6 Once Western states had resolved t a o l Yeltsin could push through the ht ny r eform process, it became imperative to permit him to secure his domestic political p s t o . Yeltsin, however, had learned his oiin political survival tactics in the old school; hne i teP e c , f h resident were to survive, he had to do so his way. This meant recourse to the comforting world of clan politics and clandestine intrigue, rather than democai p r t c rocesses. The West was forced to a c p t i re l t and did so on the c e t h s a i y, condition that the leading clan reflected the i t re t o f n e s f ree market democratic reform. In the turbulent world of Russian domestic politics, however, no one could c redibly guarantee the primacy of a single g roup of neoliberal reformers; moreover, this also risked depriving the Ye t i s y e lsn tl o e i e reshuff i g o t e v r f e i i i y i f lt ln f h ey lxblt t r equired for success. The only way all of these contradictory imperatives could be r econciled was through the Wests abandoning its insistence on purely substantive r eform and instead accepting a presentable image of Russia as in transition. Ye t i , f r lsn o h s p r , responded by developing what i at might be a textbook recipe for a presentable transition: 1) seizing the rhetorical high ground and imposing upon all Russian elites (excepting the Communists) the vocabulary of reform; 2) producing s fficient substantive changes to permit the u

W ett dca tasto asces 3 s o e l re r n i i n u c s ; ) exploiting Communist ineptitude to cast them as the perfect villain (Aleksandr Lebed is also assigned this role by Moscow e i e ) T i , a Tim McDaniel has noted lts. hs s (McDaniel, 1996), allowed Ye t i t lsn o declare outright war on the red-brown opposition while simultaneously replacing many of his shock therapists with conservative economic managers and restoring state subsidies to enterprises. Reform moved ahead as economy and society r eversed course. One genuine diffrence between e Contemporary Russia and the Soviet era was in centerregional re a i n . Yet even as ltos i dsacdisl f t i t n e t e f rom the communist past, ti a h s rea of political behavior began to acquire some of the characteristics manifest i t e African case. At no point in Russian n h history had the likelihood of the disintegration of the Russian state appeared as gre t a as in the past decade. The period of g reatest danger in this regard was in 1992 93, when the central government had to confront the consequences of economic collapse outside Moscow, yet lacked the i s i u i n l resourc s t d s . I a ntttoa e o o o n manner not unfamiliar to African states, Moscow adjusted to the temporary r eality of its diminished power by sustaini g regional re a i n t rough a web of n ltos h compromises and concessions to regional leaders (Rothchild, 1987). As Russia achieved a modicum of stability in the middle of the decade, opinion was divided as to whether it would move in the dire c tion of a federation or a recentralization of power. At present, it appears that those optimistic about the emergence of a functioning federalism in Russia have been disappointed.7 Despite the best eff r s o a ot f minority of regional leaders, the weakness of Moscow and regional governments left a d f c o s ructure tentatively in place e at t until one side or other can impose another solution. Hence, personal relations between the presidency and the regions are p fr re e red to legally binding federal pract c , a d regional governments are p ie n re dominantly content to sequester substantial portions of their budget to provide for goods and services off the books. This

r f e t t a , w t r re exception, the elcs ht ih a p resent economic crisis in Russia has b rought about the system-wide failure o f public institutions. Gogols satirical depiction in the Inspector General o t e f h mutual mistrust and manipulation of both center and regional governments has r etained its currency. The We t l rgely missed this opportus a nity to assist in the decentralization of political power. P r o t e c u e f r t i at f h as o hs can be attributed to the inherent contradiction between the political and economic dimensions of the international reform agenda. The logic of democratic reform suggests that decentralization of power and the creation of functioning federal sructures were essential for the consolidat tion of democracy.Yet IFIs, followed somewhat less ardently by the United States, were openly hostile to any substantive decentralization. Their reasoning stemmed from the primacy, i t e r v e n h i i w, of economic reform: macroeconomic trgets were best achieved only by srengtha t ening central government institutions ( Tanzi, 1993). The IMF and World Bank obviously had in mind the ministries of Finance, the Central Bank, etc. but to the early neoliberal reformers this was political salvation. They could now use the guise of international aid to demolish the institutional bases of their political opponents. T i a s l f regional leaders in the hs lo et awkward position of being on the f rontlines of democracy without the support of the central government; for they sodfrti ln t ba teb t o i s n i e o e r h runt of public disaffection with the consequences of shock therapy. The United States eventually grasped the need to adjust its aid policy toward d rect support for regional economies and i governments, but this came late in the day for Russia.8 Moreover, the United States r emained concerned lest direct assistance t regions offend central authorities in the o Kremlin. Hence it proved diff c l t a o d iut o vi f reign assistance money disappearing in o the black hole of Moscow. The most successful international initiative (and earliest) was the European Bank for Reconstruction and Developments Regional Lending Program. Generally,

however,freign investors seeking promiso ing opportunities in the regions were l f t et o fend for themselves. Some regions, such as Veliki Novgorod, succeeded in forging ahead with reform and the attraction of f reign investors,9 while others found o themselves mired in Moscow politics. In sum, the emergence of regional politics in Russia proved an opportunity missed fro m the standpoint of international aid policy. Instead of being the centerpiece of a bold initiative in democratization, it lived in the shadow of macroeconomic imperatives and presidential politics. Not surprisingly, the pattern of centerregional relations d i t d i t e d rection of personalistic and rfe n h i feudal linkages present in some African sceis oite. Western III. Western Aid and the Shaping of the Eff t New RussiaEconomic Eff c s e F rom the outset, the Western app roach to transition from Communism r ested heavily on neoliberal economics, with a secondary emphasis on building formal political institutions. International assistance institutions, however,p resented no credible or persuasive argument as to how these two dimensions of the assistance i p n rogram could be cohere t y reconciled. nl Russia thus entere i s reform era plagued d t by the same inherent contradiction between neoliberal economic reform and democratic reform that characterized W estern approaches towards assistance to the south. International financial institutions (IFIs), led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, concentrated their energies on macroeconomic reform. Western states, the United States in particular,dre t d t e r a s s i ce hi sitnee a c fforts toward t e c h reation of new political institutions and a non-governmental sector that was deemed essential in catalyzing the transition. In 1992, when the reforms first began, it was not unusual for Russias bold young reformers to assumewith the hubris characteristic of those secure i t e r n hi knowledge of economic sciencethat the e t re p n i rocess could be accomplished quickly. Their conviction was bolstered by the unabashed eff r s o J ff Sachs and o t f e rey his acolytes to accelerate the process of

macroeconomic stabilization still further. Sachs excoriated the IMF in particular for being insufficiently aggressive in the application of economic shock therapy in Russia. The faster shock therapy was implemented, the faster reformers would be able to deal a mortal blow to the sclertcifat o i n r s ructure of the Soviet command economy and facilitate the consolidation of a capitalist economy. Russian reformers and their international supporters acknowledged that such an approach was bound to impose still more pain on society. But this was considere t b a reasonable d o e price to pay for a rapid transformation of economy and society. The reform of Russias political institutions played a secondary role behind t i l rger economic undertaking, yet it hs a was no less important; for the West had to demonstrate that no political alternative existed to the contemporary liberal state. Elections, a new constitution for the Russian Federation, and the creation of e ffective legislative and judicial institutions were the principal foci of bilateral Western assistance to Russias political transition. Even so, the commitment to political r eform remained detached from macroeconomic policy, though the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Unions Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) and others initially assumed that political reform could be smoothly integrated with economic reform. When tension subsequently emerged between the political and economic dimensions of international assistance, the We t l f l t l d u t t a i w s s et ite ob ht t a committed first to defending the arc i e htc t re of economic reform in pre e u f rence to the consolidation of democratic political isiuin. ntttos The implementation phase of the assistance policy proved to be as important to Russias evolution as its concomitant theore i a b u d r . I revolved around an tcl lnes t unavoidable reality: Russia possessed neither the institutional infrastructure nor the cultural legacy to serve as the basis for the norms and institutions of the modern liberal state, however logical and desirable these aims might be. How then, could a

rational-legal order and the Good State be built if the only implements and resourc s e at the Wests disposal wererooted in past institutions and practices? The answer appeared to be simple in concept: international assistance providers were t p a e o lc t e r t s i a s l c c re o s l - t l d h i ru t n e e t o f efsye reformers whose macroeconomic credent a s w re beyond question. Hence, the il e f resh, youngand appropriately westernfaces of Yegor Gaidar,Anatoli Chubais, Peter Aven and others suddenly appeared extremely appealing. If such a g roup were p rovided access to central power and given political cover by none other than President Boris Ye t i , t e lsn hy would be able to run the state in the absence of normal institutional development and rapidly push through needed r eforms. The new elite with a resounding a ffirmation answered Dostoyevskys concern a century earlier as to whether a just society could be built on the basis of a single injustice. Western institutions shunned other domestic groups and a t r a i e reform programs and invested lentv its financial, moral, and political support in a narrow clique of elites (We e , 1 9 ) dl 99. Moreover, the linear logic of development that now prevailed indicated that reformers had no other alternative than to aspire to the goals set for them by Western assistance institutions. Not surprisingly,Ye t i reform lsns team was soon described in most favorable termsradical, bold, young, pro western, pro-capitalistwhile anyone who voiced doubts or opposition to the new course soon had a host of negative adjectives preceding his name in the p resshard-line, conservative, nationalist, or anti-reform. The We t s s need to find loyal cadres in Russia who p romised rapid solutions had at a stroke r educed a remarkably complex array of s c a f rces to a simplistic dichotomy: our oil o r eformers (the We t , a d t e re t L t r, s) n h s. ae this acquired a more damaging dimension, as Western policymakers found it easy to slip into the habit of equating Slavophilic tendencies with an anti-reform orientation. A a s roke, the West made it impossible for t t Russia assert its own national identity without offending the premises of eco-

nomic reform. This dichotomy had now been stretched beyond the breaking point, as we must now consider whether individuals such as Putin fit the pro c p t l -aiaist mold. The substance of the Russian reform and Western assistance policy genuinely r eflected a radical departuref rom the Russian past, but the political sye o is tl f t implementation remained grounded in the more familiar terrain of personalistic and cineitceieg l e t l s i l t roups and a highly authoritarian structure. Once the basic r eforms were put in place, however, W estern policymakers presumed that Russian reformerswho now stood to be the chief beneficiaries of a jury-rigged and deinsitutionalized systemwould lead the way in supporting reforms the would undermine their own positions. Like Cincinnatus in Ancient Rome, the Wet s r elied upon Russias first wave of reformers to take on the mantle of authoritarian power during the crisis period, only to shed it once the crisis had passed and normal governance emerged. The West had not provided for the possibility that Russias new elites would find the traditional mantle of power so appealing that they would re u e t t k i o . f s o a e t ff There were two justifications for delinking economic reform from public accountability, each of which were c e r y lal r ecognizable to societies with similar r eform experiences. First, the impact of macroeconomic stabilization policies imposed such hardship on the population and proved so politically unpopular that only an authoritarian leadership could secure the stable implementation of macroeconomic policy.Ye t i c n rontalsns of tion with Parliament in October 1993 was, confirmation that a firm (read: nondemocratic) hand was justified. Anti-shock therapy elites in Parliament, bitter at their e ffective disenfranchisement in the face of the governments economic policy, s i e ezd upon growing public discontent in an e ott p ff r o ressure t e Yeltsin government h into making concessions on the new Russian constitution. Both sides in the constitutional debatepresident and parliamentrefused to budge, leading to political stalemate in late summer 1993.

Ye t i resolved the issue through the use lsn o f rce, bombing parliament, arresting key f o leaders and calling for new elections and a r f rendum on his version of the constituee tion. On 12 December 1993, the Russian e e t r t rendered a split decision on lcoae Yeltsins actions by giving Vladimir Zhirinovskys Liberal Democratic Party of Russia a stunning plurality of the public vote, yet approving the highly centralized Ye t i c n t t t o .10 lsn osiuin Second, Western elites considered Yeltsins authoritarian response as a necessary aspect of crisis management. At the beginning of Russias reforms, the W orld Bank spoke approvingly of the need for a crisis management style of policymaking. The situation in Russia required u rgent action, and state institutions either did not yet exist or were t o f a i e t o rgl o r espond adro t y. Hence, a tightly knit il r eform team could navigate through the institutional wreckage of the old regime to achieve the first, essential goals of macro economic stabilization (World Bank, 1992). The urgency of the task also dictated that te b f e f h y e re d rom the usual and customary legal and political constraints in implementing their policy. O c t e c i i a ne h rtcl phase had passed, the World Bank re a soned, it would be desirable to broaden the base of governance and link it firmly to formal institutions. Yet the Bank provided no insight as to how this would be accomplished, or how it would be possible to dislodge a highly centralized government that soon had the force of constitutional authority behind it. Not surprisingly,a s Russia lumbere f m c i i t c i i , d ro r s s o r s s international aid providers found it easier t s s a n t e e i t n s y e o rule and o uti h xsig tl f postpone into the indefinite future t e e a h r of normal government. But it was the privatization process especially in its second stagethat dealt a mortal blow to the future of the Russian s a e I a remarkable tour de forc o tt. n e f p l t c l a rogance, Anatoli Chubais and oiia r Vladimir Potanin, former head of Uneximbank, concocted a loans for shares arrangement in which a select g roup of seven court banks were p ro vided controlling share i t e c s n h rown jewels of the Russian economy in exchange

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for loans the Russian government needed to cover its budget deficit. Theore i a l t c l y, this arrangement was to permit the government immediate access to finances, while p reparing the ground for the sell off o k y f e industries that would generate still more r evenue. The problem, however, was that the scheme was blatantly corrupt: the favored banks all had intimate links to the r eform government, and they subsequently purchased Russias richest assets at far below the market value (Boldyrev, 1 9 ) 11 96. This deprived the government of its anticipated revenue stream and left the a t a t o o f reign investors as the lone trcin f o r emaining option for generating revenue. Equally important, the financial oligarchy c reated as a consequence promptly engaged in the speculative sale of its new assets, undermining still further the chances for the restoration of a productive economy. Privatization policy also undermined the governments ability to develop a p f s i n l c v l s r i e I a e ott ro e s o a i i e v c . n n ff r o assume dire t c n rol over the pro e s c ot cs, Chubais used foreign assistance funds to construct Russias massive privatization p rogram. Russian Privatization Centers (RPCs) were c reated to implement the p rogram, yet the RPCs needed to re ru t c i personnel. A ready pool of labor was found among government personnel loyal to Chubais, who were s c t y p i f r t e r e re l a d o h i consulting services. Chubais could count on finding many re ru t , i l rge part c is n a because his government was responsible for the low wages paid to civil servants. Privatization thus triumphed in Russia only by compromising the possibility of a genuine civil service (Stavrakis, 1998; Boldyrev, 1996; We e , 1 9 ) dl 96. The enervation of the state was paralleled by the emergence of speculation as the dominant form of activity. Lacking ete lglp i h r e a rotection or political support for their activities, enterprises rapidly saw ta g h t reater advantages accrued to them t rough asset-stripping (and subsequent h sale on the black and/or international markets) rather than continued production of goods for which demand had collapsed and raw materials grown scare Tax . r evenues accordingly shrank and enter-

prise managers sought to avoid payment of taxes altogether. The Russian state, as P roska Nagy argued (1999) had fallen i victim to the zeal of its economic reform agenda. The lone remaining option for salvation now rested in attracting foreign investors to the recently created Russian government treasuries (GKO) market. The GKOs initially proved successful as the Russian government promised et x remely attractive rates of return on twoyear bonds and it succeeded in obtaining emergency IMF funding to bolster its depleted coffers. So successful was the GKO market that, within a year, the World Bank was pleased to anoint Russia as the worlds most attractive emerging market. But, as Sergei Glaziev (1999) has recently noted, there were never sufficient funds for the government to pay them on maturity.t I was a house of cards that was bound to collapse. Major Western investors had aready begun to cool their ardor for the l Russian bond market in 1997, concerned that Moscow would be unable to honor its debt commitments. By 1998, the imminent withdrawal of foreign investment had r eached critical dimensions. As foreign investment lagged, the financial crisis r eturned with renewed force and Chubais was dispatched to Washington to negotiate an IMF bailout package designed to re t re so investor confidence. The operation proved a success, as the IMF pledged $22.6 billion in support of Russian reform.12 Unfortunately, the patient died, as Western investors failed to be swayed by the IMF endorsement. Confidence in the Russian governments effort to persevere along the r eform path evaporated and with it went bond prices and the stock market. Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko (another young r eformer) initially attempted to stay the course, but less than three days later was f rced to announce a debt moratorium and o e ffective devaluation of the ruble. Shortly t e a t r, Kiriyenko resigned, along with h re f e t e e t re complement of reformers in h ni government. The appointment of Yevgeni Primakov as Prime Minister eased the p l t c l c i i b t R s i remained in deep oiia rss u usa economic crisis. Primakovs deliberate slowness in addressing the economic

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situation left Russia suspended at the lowest point it had been since reforms began. For the international assistance community however, t e p h roblem was even more p rofound, for they no longer had a single individual they could point to that could serve as the credible standard beare o reform. If Russia was to be r f r escued with renewed international assistance, a new accommodation had to be r eached with the new elite that came to power in the Kremlin. This required time; Russias future would have to wait. A i s t happened, Yeltsin did not want to take the time, and his sacking of Primakov pre vented any serious movement toward accommodation. Stepashin was never given time to achieve this, and Putin appears to have concentrated his energ e is on building his domestic popularity t rough the war in Chechnya. h The Russian economic reform pro gram endorsed by the West thus had a powerful corro i e e e t o t e s a e s v ff c n h t t , neglecting or undermining the very isiuinlifat n t t t o a n r s ructureresponsible for managing the transition. Economic product v t aready re l n f i i y, l e i g rom the Soviet collapse, could not endure the plundering o afnniloia f i a c a l g rchy created by a r eformist clique that employed the perpetual crisis as a persuasive argument for operating above the law.As the legal order was compromised, economic managers ventured into the darker corners of the speculative economy, compromising the much-desired breakthrough to a normal economy. Reformers in the allegedly new economic institutions also learned the darker arts of global finance. The Russian Central Bank recently admitted that it channeled perhaps as much as $50 billion o i sreserves into FIMACO, an obscure ft o ff-shore corporation in Jersey, p i c p l y rnial t p v n i s recapturef o re e t t rom Western c d t r .13 In its final moments, the re i o s Kiriyenko government revealed that their commitment to transforming Russia was secondary to the perquisites of power.As Kiriyenko and a stream of bold young r eformers resigned en masse and decried t e c l a s o reform in Russia, the h olpe f pltcldc o i i a e repitude of Ye t i , a d c i i lsn n rss

that now confronted Russia in the hands of the inept old guard I w s a remarkable . t a performance, inasmuch as their actions were as much responsible for the collapse o reform as any one elses, and it was they f who massaged Yeltsins ego and hid behind his political shadow to cling to power. Eurasian and African Convergence The preceding sections indicate that W estern assistance played an important r in fostering in post-Soviet Russia the ole types of state pathologies more commonly found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the formally distinct imperatives of development and transition, the striking parallels between the two regions in the a a o s a e f i u and economic stagnare s f t t a l re tion attract more attention than do their d ffrences. The Tsarist Empire and the i e African continent are p roducts of widely d ffering patterns of historical developi ment but, since 1991, the international aid r egime has been a fixed constant in the e ot o teesae t ssanpltcl ff r s f h s t t s o u t i o i i a viability and economic growth. The imprint of this regime can be discerned in several key are s a d i i t t i t a w a, n t s o hs ht e now turn.

The Triumph of Neoliberal Economic Ideology The Wests triumph in the cold war explains a remarkable convergence in the economic dimension of international aid policy. Neoliberal economics, now unchallenged, stipulated that Western aid be d rected less toward enhancing state i capacity, t a t s c a f rces deemed hn o oil o capable of satisfying the macroeconomic constraints establishment by the new government. Hence, African and postSoviet states could be viewed as identical in the sense that while the causes of the p roblems confronting African states in the NIS diffr, t e s l t o s a the same. e h o u i n re A substantial deconstruction of the state was, there o f re, essential to develop a viable private sector in a society that did not possess one. De-emphasizing the state also initially served a dual political purpose: intentionally, it undermined the Soviet power structures that challenged American primacy, and domestically,t i demolished the basis the command

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economy. Weak states were now seen as indispensable for the development civil society and private enterprise, and they conveniently minimizing any potential t re t t i region may pose to the Wet h a hs s. Only later in the reform pro e s d d i cs i t become apparent that the state had been so critically impaired that it was unable to defend itself against the new social forc s e unleashed by reform (i.e., the economic oia h) l g rc y . The demise of the African state as the agent of social transformation followed a d ffrent path, only to arrive at the same i e r esult. Despite efforts to shore up weak administrative capacities, the African states success in speeding the emergence o cvlsceyp f i i o i t roved disappointing. A g rowing number of scholars came to see the state as primarily concerned with p roducing and sustaining a new class of bureaucratic bourg o s e ( h v i 1 7 ) a eii Sij, 95, s aid intended for improving government capabilities was directed toward a new class who used the resources for its own benefit (Leys, 1975). Strengthening an interventionist state in these circumstances amounted to supporting an exploiting cas e l s ffort to mold African society to its i t rest and appro r a e f r i s l t e ne pit o tef h benefits of state contro. l The solution to the problems caused by the overdeveloped state lay in the donor community re i d recting aid and technical assistance away from the state bureaucracy and toward nongovernmental organizations. This blended conveniently with a new international emphasis on structural adjustment, economic liberalization, and privatization to support policies that explicitly bypassed the public sphere t e : h state had been eclipsed in the eyes of donors by a veil of presumed obsolescence. In its place, the new international community pursued the following object v s 1) Advocacy of privatization and ie: . ic n reasing involvement of private enterprise in aid arrangements; and 2.) Diversion of aid funds via nongovernmental o rganizations; formation of donor coord i nating consortia, with corresponding counterpart front organizations, which assume major policy ro e ; pr f rence for ls ee working with autonomous quasi-govern-

mental organizations; and in roduction of t highly advanced monitoring methodologies for which national expertise is often insuff c e t t c n t t t a e e t v i i n o o s i u e n ff c i e counterpart in policy discussion and implementation (Doornbos, 1990). I R s i , a i A r c , t e result was n usa s n fia h a s a e c ronically incapable of achieving tt h b s c s c e a o j c i e , l t a o e reform ai oitl betvs e ln g a s 14 This ideologically mandated ol. weakening of administrative capacity did have one perverse benefit for the strategy of shock therapy: it provided clear and convincing evidence that state institutions were not up to the task of transition. The only alternative had to be devolving policy-making authority to a cohort of r eformers. The triumph of ideology over reform also meant the victory of a more severe vision of what had to be done and how it should be accomplished. Now, nothing less than a radical and painful re t s ructuring (which in Russia had to be done wholesale) would suffice, and it had to be done with all deliberate speed. Advocates of a more moderate, conservative approach were denounced as defenders of the old regime. The tension between radical and piecemeal r eform described by Hirschman more than t ree decades earlier (1963) had been won h decisively by the new Stakhanovites. The harsh edge of reformist ideology also deprived post-Soviet states of some of their most important resources: economic managers. Neoliberal ideology depicted all Soviet-era managers as thoroughly incompetent, or corrupt, or both when, in fact, this was not entire y t e 15 A substantial l ru . number of managers were competent at their jobs and sincere i t e r d s re t n hi ei o pursue reformalbeit they were unsure o f how to proceed. But the very idea of economic management had (now) unacceptable communist overtones. Transition policy, rather than making administrative competence the touchstone of acceptability, instead excluded everyone from the p revious regime on the basis of their pltclclrto.I o i i a o o a i n ronically, even the Bolsheviks system of commissars succeeded in partially avoiding this erro r. Finally, ideological militancy in economic reform had the eff c o re l c t et f p i a -

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ing in Russia the same choiceless democracies described in the experience of African states (Mkandawire 1 9 ) I s i u , 98. ntttional democracy was unpackaged in all its splendor in Russia, yet neither elections nor the formal separation of powers have r estrained the traditional circulation of elites. The exigencies of economic transition, as Mkandawire n t s require an oe, undemocratic remolding of the traditional world and thus comfortably embraced authoritarian legacies in Russia and Africa. Especially important was the need to insulate institutions such as the Central Bank, and key ministries from the democai p r t c rocess lest the transition be compro mised. This explains the continuation of excessive secrecy, a l c o t a s a a k f r n p rency and the absence of accountability in freely elected governments. The publics acquiescence is also easily understood: if the democrats are themselves authoritarian, to whom can they turn?

The Recomposition of Power The Russian case bears a close r esemblance to the reconfiguration or recomposition described in African experience (Mbembe in Joseph, 1999). While international assistance focused on the objective of linear transitions to known societal destinations, traditional sourc s e and forms of Russian power have in fact p roven remarkably adaptable, making political and social development an unpredictable, multidimensional pro e s cs. Russia is, in the words of Grant and Nijman (1998), postmodern given its unrestricted ability to absorb Western institutions and the vocabularies of macro economic theory yet re a n i s t a i i n l ti t rdtoa authoritarian pro l v t e f r e i e rule. The ciiis o lt new Russia is on the third road of development similar to African experience, neither Western nor a simple return to the past. Western policymakers have failed to appreciate this allowing a contradiction to develop within aid policy that grows with each further decline in economic performance, despotic dismissal of a government, or deterioration in the life expectac o isctzn. ny f t iies This is not a happy outcome, for the contradictions embedded in such

r ecompositions cannot be suppressed indefinitely,c reating systems that are perennially unstable and prone to cycles alternating between spasms of development and collapse. This has been vividly demonstrated in recent months by the Russian economic collapse, which now leaves the country gloomily awaiting another round of mobilization. Whether it will be externally driven by the demands of IFIs and Western states, or domestically determined by the emergence of a new authoritarian elite (in the form of a Yu i r Luzhkov or Aleksandr Lebed) remains to be seen. The most disturbing element of this p rocess is the extent to which normal politics and economic behavior have been overtaken by pervasive corruption and o rganized crime. In the earliest days of Russian reform, foreign capital was to p rovide the backbone of a new economy and new practices. Bound as they were by t e rule of law and norms of We t r c v l h sen ii society, i s e e a reasonable bet that they t emd would insist on nothing less in their dealings in Russia. This assessment was, by and larg , c r e o rect. The principal failings in Americas reform approach were twofold, however. U.S. policy tolerated the subsequent deviation from the attraction of f reign investment and concentration on o the speculative redistribution of resourc s e to the newly created domestic economic e i e F reign investors thus had to sit out a lt. o critical window of opportunity and, when t e returned to consider Russia, a finanhy ca oia i l l g rchy was in place and accorded p f rential legal status. Russia had taken, re e in keeping with Renos analysis, the low r of informal and illegal links to the oad international economy. Second, American policy failed to grasp that the state in contemporary Rsi,frf u s a a rom being a virtuous alternatv t o i e o rganized crime, had instead become the ultimate racketeer. I h s s u y n i td o t e role of violence in Russian business, f h V. Radaev (1998) observes that the state emerged not as an alternative to criminal rackets, but as a kind of ultimate racketeer. The state was less concerned about the ru e l of law than in its more f m l a ro e o aiir l f extracting tribute. Clearly, a s a e o i n e tt retd

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toward criminal behavior carries profound consequences for legal institutions and c v l s c e y. Russias state was morea ii oit constellation of traditional and newer adaptive responses by the political elite than anything on the order of the rationallglsae ea tt.

Presentability and Virtual Democracy The toleration of a presentable external image of reform is where international aid to Russia reflects its most damagi g s m l r t t re e t African experience. n iiaiy o cn IFIs and Western governments were t o o willing to tolerate the deformation of reform and the concept was converted into a hollow shell whose content was to be filled by the elite who promised much yet p roduced little. The level of toleration in the case of Russia, however, s r i s c t a n redulity: as evidence mounted of the pervasive cr o ruption within the government and its c re p o rogram of privatization, Western o i i l rere t d t a remarkable defense. ff c a s t a e o The reform process might be unfair and cr o rupt at the start, but it nonetheless achieved the most important task of r edistributing property. Now,p rovided the conditions were in place to guarantee the f and unfettered flow of information, ree p roperty would eventually change hands u t l i reached the most eff c e t p ni t i i n roducers. The lack of democratic accountability was similarly easy to rationalize: Russia had made an excellent electoral start and, with several more iterations, would sure y l gti rgt e t ih. How can one comprehend policymakers adopting such a view when evidence mounted that Russia possessed a virtual economy, consuming more value ta i p h n t roduced (Gaddy and Ickes, 1998), and the public continued a still deeper withdrawal from civil society, only to have the absence filled by organized crime? The answer is that We t r i s i u sen nttt o s c rcled their wagons still closer in i a round their chosen instruments and stldfrap ete o resentable image of transition f the Yeltsin government. The Wet rom s r esponded to the reconfiguration of power by re ff r i g i s f i h i r n i a imn t at n tastion, a position not diffre t f e n rom African e i e rhetorical embrace of democratizalts

tion (Mbembe, 1990). Another description o African presentability to the outside f evoked haunting reminiscences of Russia: hybrid regimes [in which] an outward democratic form is energized by an inner authoritarian capacity, e p c a l i t e seily n h r ealm of economic policy (Mkandawire , 1999). The virtual economy in Russia was thus paralleled by the construction of the virtual democracy described by Richard Joseph (1999, 1997), the elements of which are formal basis in citizen ru e : l but with key decision-making insulated f rom popular involvement; manipulation of democratic transitions by political incumbents, including the use of violence and election fraud; wider popular participation, but narrow policy choices and outcomes.

Crisis Management The perception of a severe c i i , t e rss h consequences of which will be catastrophic, is a common feature sustaining reforming elites on both continents. The only option p resumablyis to rely on an insulated core of technocrats to weather the storm. The r eality of institutional collapse made this a r easonable initial position. But it quickly became apparent in both regions that neither IFIs nor domestic elites were serious about restoring institutional capacity as quickly as possible. Moreover, key elements of the crisis management perspective were needlessly anti-democ a i . I p r i u a a negative popular r t c n a t c l r, r esponse was singled out as the gre t s aet potential thre t t n o i e a reform, as a o elbrl e fforts to ameliorate economic and social hardships and shelter productive sectors of the economy would compromise the basis p remises of structural adjustment (Mkandawire 1 9 ) 16 , 99. These considerations suggest further that the crisis management style was not a temporary device, but an alternative style o rule, one whose authoritarian character f r esonated favorably with traditional pltclclu o i i a u t re. The need to respond decisively to social discontent emanating f harsh adjustment policies required rom that a coercive apparatus be added to the financial and economic institutions that constituted the core of the crisis manage-

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ment team. The ostensibly provisional government would have to grow by ic n remental accretion into a much more durable entity. S g i i a t y, t i i t e o e infcnl hs s h n aspect where Russias evolution diff r es f the African case; for the Kremlin rom p roved incapable after 1993 of mustering the military forc require t a s s i t e e d o sit n h implementation of policy. Russias calamitous defeat in the 1994 war in Chechnya persuaded all those who might still have entertained hopes for the quick restoration of Russian military prowess. The Ye t i lsn government had so thoroughly alienated the military-industrial complex and starved it financially that when striking Russian miners blocked the Trans-Siberian r i road in mid-1998, troops refused the al governments dire t o e t f rc b y c rd r o o i l disperse the miners. But the debilitation of the Russian military was an important distinguishing element in Russias case. A n African military government, while undesirable was still a tolerable option. Not so the Russian case, where even the whisper of the term Russian military government made many in the Wet s shudder.

E C . reating the Commerc a C a s il ls The international emphasis on mass privatization in Russia also helped cre t a ae form of state-economy relations with g a e a i i i s t African experience. re t r ff n t e o Despite formal privatization, Russia never succeeded in enforcing a meaningful distinction between public and private spheres, and monitoring the limit of state it n rusion into social processes and institutions. This was due to the fact that Russian privatization, channeled through the hands of an unaccountable elite, created a corrupt fusion between the public and commerca il sectors. Olga Kryshtanovskaya observed ta ap h t rocess was at work in Russia not dsiia f i s m l r rom private sector development in some African societies: reformist elites played a cru i l role in determining the ca specific content and character of the financial and entrepreneurial strata in capitalist Russia (Kryshtanovskaya, 1996; Reno, 1995; Stavrakis 1998). Having c reated the private sector, it would be f o i h n t t re y o t e r resourc s i ols o o l n hi e n

p l t c l s ruggles; new Russian capitalists oiia t likewise saw this as an opportunity to build their own political base in government. But this could only function if ru e o l f law wererelaxed to permit a porous boundary between the two. An internationally acceptable image of distinct state and private sectors was created in Russia, but the re l t o aiy f teritrcini silbs cpu h i n e a t o s t l e t a t red by Jean Francois Bayart: In A r c , t e s a e i fia h tt s the prime (though not the only) channel of accumulation...Even the successful businessmen in the informal sector are highly dependent on the state because they need constantly to circumvent regulations and obtain off c a p r i s I i , t e f re i i l e m t . t s h re o , otiose to seek to establish a conceptual d ffrence between the private and public i e sectors. (Bayart 1986, in Reno, 1996). Only following 1996 did an innovative departure f rom this comparison emerge, as Russian bankers (the oligarchs) acquired suff i c e t s rength to become the dominant in t element in the state-economy relationship. The 1998 financial collapse has provisiona l returned the state to its more familiar ly position as master over a disintegrating economy. T e p l t c l s ruggles in the h oiia t Kremlin have thus returned to their hsoi ojc o fsiain itrc bet f acnto.

F. The Russian StatePredator in the Shadows Parallels between Russian and African politics revolve around the weak state, the existence of which has now been acknowledged by many observers of Russia. Unfortunately, the subsequent calls f r s rengthening state capacity dire t o t c attention away from the central issues of the post-reform era. Chief among these is the need to explain the apparent paradox of power in Russia and A r c : I t e s a e fia f h tt has undergone institutional collapse, what accounts for its continued existence? How has it been possible for a Russian hobbled Leviathan to push through, among other things, the most painful and massive transfer of property and resourc s f m e ro public to private ownership in history? As in the African case, the core o f Russian state power which has sustained itself is a fusion of traditional Russian political practices with the economic

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dynamism unleashed following the first s a e o reform. Thomas Graham (1995) tgs f has accurately described the clan nature o f Rsinpltc,a apc o pltcllf usa oiis n set f oiia ie with historic roots in the Soviet and tsarist eras. In an atmosphere of conflict among competing clans, the logic of political survival dictated an accommodation among old elites, the incorporation of new economic elites spawned by reform, and the marginalization of political mavericks that risked upsetting the apple cart. It is this shadow state in Russia that frames the political context within which questions of Russias socioeconomic development, national identity and global r ole will be answered. Many state institutions have collapsed, and the vacuum has been filled by a constellation of government and new commercial elites whose existence rests upon a denial of the fundamental institutions and practices of the rational-legal state. The epitome of this was r eached in Russia with the consolidation of power in Moscow by a narrow array of politicians and bankers overseeing the socalled court banks. The role of Western assistance in c reating the context for the emergence of the financial oligarchy at the heart of the Russian shadow state has already been n t d I t i regard i i i p r a t t oe. n hs , t s motn o point to a second sin of American assistance policy, namely, having spawned the unproductive Russian oligarchic economic sructure, U.S. and IFI policy sought to t support it at every conceivable juncture , rather than moderate or dismantle it. This i reflected in the urging of the United s States and German governments to continue massive extension of credits to Russia t rough the International Monetary Fund, h even though many in the business commun t a ready were convinced such meaiy l sures were b u d t f i . I i a p o n o a l t s t resent unclear why this was the course of action taken, one that resulted in throwing good money after bad. A second prominent feature o t e f h shadow state is a predatory elite-society r elationship in which a congeries of elites scavenges off t e p h roductive elements of s c e y w t l t l o n regard f r t e ru e oit ih ite r o o h l of law.P roductivity that emerges outside of

central control is either quickly co-opted or t x d o rereats still furtheroften into ae, r t the illegal economyto pre e v i s sre t autonomy. This has had a particularly damaging eff c o f reign investment, as et n o W estern investors confront legal conditions that turn against their advantage almost as soon as their ventures develop some p romise. The arbitrary nature with which tax laws were interpreted and enforc d f r e, o example, so frustrated General Electric that it elected to close its Moscow subsidiary Financial Times, 20 March 1997). Similarly, ( Australias Star Mining recently learned t a i s p rchase of part of Lenzoloto, a ht t u small gold mining business, was invalidated because it purportedly violated privatization rules. The problem, as noted s h t t e a s re b The Financial Times, i t a h l w a y so vague, the bulk of the Russian stock market could easily be deemed to have b reached these ru e (Financial Ti e , 1 ls ms 0 April 1997). Trans-World Metals, a Londonbased metals company that has acquired a substantial portion of the Russian aluminum industry, has also been caught in the maelstro o e i e c n l c . Trans-Wo l m f lt ofit rds sin, apparently, was to acquire i s i v s t net ments under the patronage of former Kremlin security chief Aleksandr Korzhakov and former First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets. Once Ye t i f red lsn i both of these men and the aluminum industry came under suspicion of supporting Lebed, Trans-World became an easy trget for state agencies controlled by a Chubais and Chernomyrdin. Not surprisingly, local Russian officials soon nullified 1 its stake in at least one major smelter.7 Domestic actors are also fair game for the predatory state. Moscow Mayor Yu i r Luzhkov recently succeeded in using a modest municipal payroll tax on Moscow r esidents to generate a road fund of approximately $645 million. Ye t e f d r l t h eea parliament has entered the picture and passed a law re u r n t a a l a t h l t i qiig ht t es af hs amount be spent on the national road system. Parliament, evidently with executive support, effectively stripped the mayor of control over part of the municipal budget (Moskovskii komsomolets, 23 May 1997). Similarly, the central government has been assiduously diverting tax re v

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enues for its own, unspecified, purposes. According to Argumenti i Fakti,te Ach counting Chamber of the Russian Federation discovered that, while the government collected all taxes due for 1995, it paid out only two-thirds of the budget funds earmarked for social spending, including salaries and pensions. The government also overspent by a factor of four on grants to private companies, and created a separate fundin excess of $600 million out of temporarily free monetary funds. Not surprisingly,te Accounting Chamber h also determined that budgetary payments a not made according to the law, b t b re u y uncoordinated instructions, decre s l t e s e, etr, and telegrams.

Societal Withdrawal and Economic Decline Russia reflects the excessive depres sion of economic productivity and societal withdrawal characteristic of many African societies that is part of the pathology of state decay (Young and Turner, 1 8 ) 95. International financial institutions and W e t r s a e a right to encourage the s e n t t s re Russian government to pursue sound financial policies and macroeconomic stabilization. Unfortunately, the manner in which this policy was pursuedat the expense of virtually all productive plants in the countrysimultaneously destroyed substantial valuable assets and engendered a population deeply suspicious of We t r , sen especially American, foreign assistance. Parallel to this has been the pervasive withdrawal of Russian society fro m politics. The famed political quiescence of the Russian publicits unwillingness to participate in mass strikes and other forms of social unrestis eagerly seized upon by W estern politicians as evidence that things a on track in Russia, despite the re d fficulties. This might indeed appear to be i the case, as widespread wage non-payment, shortages in some regions, and a steep drop in the purchasing power of the r uble have failed to catalyze social unret s. Btf u rom the African perspective, societal withdrawal emerges as the more plausible explanation. Why should ordinary Russians take their demands to a government that evinces no intere t i remedying its s n i l ? T i resonates deeply in Russian ls hs

history, where articulating ones grievances inevitably brought still worse conditions. The logical response is to amass as much wealth as possible without drawing the attention of the tax police or the local mafia, or both. Sequestering resourc s f m e ro ap redatory state, whether food or money, is a common feature of developing societies and conforms well to Russian/Soviet experience. Reform-era Russia continues in t i t a i i n a reflected by the amount of hs rdto s personal income that goes unreported: average household incomes in 199798 were approximately US$205220 per month, well above the off c a f g re o iil iu f US$120130. W ithdrawal has its analog among r egional authorities who are as aware o f the centers acquisitive tendency and depressive macroeconomic policies, as they a the need to sustain local productivity. re Regions there o have strong incentives f re either to mask productive enterprises, or r each an accommodation with central elites in advance. Their diffre t a a i i i s t e nil blte o pursue either course will further fuel the development of feudal re a i n . ltos

The Personnel FactorDomestic and Itrainl nentoa The genuinely surprising aspect of international aid to the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union has been almost exclusively neglected: the personnel responsible for shaping and administering bilateral international assistance policy were drawn p redominantly from African, South Asian, and (to a lesser extent) Latin American postings. USAID, for example, had no are a competence in the NIS. Early on, the Agency scornfully rejected the argument that existing personnel had to be retrained before being posted to the NIS or, a t r a lent v l a specialists had to be brought i e y, rea into the USAID bureaucracy.I e et n ffc, USAID staffed its NIS missions with individuals ignorant of the cultural and political context within which they operated. It was not surprising, for example, to find key assistance personnel in Moscow, Kyiv,Almaty, and elsewhere whose pre i vous postings had never allowed them to set foot outside of Africa and Asia. Conse-

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quently, the implementation of aid policy was seen largely as a matter of bureauc a i routine developed in other are s o rtc a f the world. If the NIS were indeed diffre t e n, few in the bilateral assistance community were p repared to understand this re l t aiy and act accordingly. A related problem was the extraord i nary number of foreign nationals that W estern assistance agencies employed. While this produced the superficial sensation of working among the people, it fclttdtecr a i i a e h o ruption of the aid process and, by extension, the objectives of assistance. In Russia, for example, Western personnel failed to appre i t t a f reign cae ht o nationals would not be the dispassionate p roviders of information, but would seek to channel assistance funds toward t e r hi crcle of friends (Stavrakis, 1996). Consei quently, Russian organizations quickly r ealized that the aid distribution structure was corrupted by personal contacts; they had to choose between playing this game or shutting themselves offf rom international support. Personnel in IFIs represented a dffre t p i e n roblem. The ideology that animated Bretton Woods institutions in the past several decades was that of macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment, regional specialization was irrelevant for the implementation of IMF and World Bank policies. Hence, as the IMF engaged in a massive hiring binge to meet the expanded demands of assistance to the postSoviet world it sought personnel whose knowledge re n o i f rced IMF values. The goal, after all, was to make these states adjust to a new economic reality and cultural variables c u t d f r l t l i t i regard one o ite n hs . Finally, t e was the key problem of h re f n i g a reform team that could be trusted idn to administer the entry of Russia into the global economy and community of fre e market societies. Ye t e p t h roblem here was similar to that examined by William Reno in Sierra Leone: the success of externallyimposed reform rested upon its implementation by individuals who stood the most to gain by their success (Reno, 1995). Hence, Yegor Gaidar, Chubais, Gennadi Burbulis and others were called upon to f c l t t aiiae r eforms that would lead to their ultimately

giving up the reins of power to more normal governance. Predictably,ti hs p roved unre l s i a d t e reform team aitc n h p f r d t l rc f m c i i t c i i re e re o u h ro r s s o r s s rather than give up their power. Conclusion In sum, the current Russian state r esembles in important respects the shadow s a e p s n i c r a n African societies and t t re e t n e t i s a d a a f r remove from the liberal tns t a democratic vision held out for it in the early e a o reform. This entity emerges despite r f (and perhaps because of) formal institutional decay with the objective of sustaining a particular elite in power rather than p roducing a rational-legal framework devoted to societal transformation. This explains the apparent paradox of Russias simultaneous weakness while possessing r emarkable political strength in selected a reas. The primacy of clan politics Russianstyle over legal and social institutions r f e t d a s b t n i l recomposition of elce usata traditional forms of Russian power in contemporary setting. It also indicates that f r h r re o m w l b a f n t o o e i e s l ute fr il e ucin f lt ef i t rest, rather than any sense of commitne ment to societal development. I i n t d fficult to imagine contempotso i rary Russia comfortably fulfilling every one of t e e c i e i . I i a s re a i e y e s t hs rtra t s lo l t v l a y o identify where Western assistance played an i f u n i l ro e i b i g n t i s a e o a ar n l e t a l n r n i g h s t t f ffis t p s . P rh p t e o l s g i i a t d ffrence o as e as h ny infcn i e between Russian and African experience is ta telte cnb pritdt fi wie ht h atr a e emte o al hl, frtetm big Rsi i vee a to o h ie en, usa s iwd s o dangero s t b l f t t e w i o e t p c u o e e t o h h m f n ro i frces. Hence, the dialogue between the o u or Russian Prime Minister d j u and IFIs and major We t r c s e n reditors focuses on finding an appropriate mix of symbols, gesture and s, minimal substantive commitment that will keep open the gates of We t r a s s a c . sen sitne Sadly, i p s e p r e c i a y g i e a y f at xeine s n ud, n rslswl b tep d c o i s i u i n e u t i l e h ro u t f n t t t o s whose concern is that Russia appearsin the words of Leo Tolstoyc m e i f u . om l at Russian and African Divergence: Imperial Legacy and National Identity Defenders of the uniqueness of Russian experience will doubtless take issue with the present comparison on the

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g round that re o t n t African experience srig o to explain the phenomenon of Russias paradoxically weak state does violence t t e role of cultural variables. They may o h also point to instances where post-Soviet developments seemingly can be explained within the frame of Russian historical experience. The focus of this analysis, however, was not to show the irrelevance of idiosyncratic factors, but to demonstrate t a a p c s o recomposition of power h t ro e s f and the syndromes of shadow state, virtual democracy, eviscerated economy, a d n withdrawn society are pathologies common to a broad spectrum of societies. But it i a s p c s l a t i j n t re t a t e s l o re i e y t h s u c u ht h d ffrences between Russian and African i e experience acquire c rucial importance. Whereas Fritz Ermath is concerned that Russia as a defunct society might not be able to survive (1999), the concern emanatigf n rom this analysis is the opposite. Namely, what if Russia can not mere y l survive as a deformed society and polity but achieve a substantial measure o f political stability and economic prosperity? Russias past success in sustaining itself for t ree quarters of a century on deformed h and dysfunctional communist institutions certainly suggests that it can successfully institutionalizealbeit not permanentlya conception of political power substantially d ffre t f i e n rom Western standard . T i i s hs s potentially of exceptional importance given Russias ro e i t e p l n h resent century as W estern liberal democracys rival. Research by David Brown (1989) further suggests that this is more than a mere h s o i a itrcl fluke as viable bureaucracies may be sustained by elaborate ru e s ructure t a l t s ht b a l t l relationship to the Weberian er ite ideal-type. Such ru e s ructures need not l t necessarily be fully transpare t t t e r n o hi publics and practitioners, though they may nevertheless have considerable power to o rder the social world. Is it possible that Russias shadow state succeeds in surviving to become a model other state elites might seek to emulate? Those skeptical of such an outcome, might consider more c o e y t e lsl h November 1999 Ukrainian presidential elections, in which President Leonid Kuchma appears to have copied Ye t i i e lsnt

electoral democracy. Having co-opted centrist opposition to his candidacy, Kuchma was able to cast himself as the only alternative to a communist revanche. In addition, the president utilized his control over the privatization process in Ukraine to create and monopoly his own private monopolists and muzzle the media criticism over what is one of the worst economic records among the Newly Independent States. Finally, a w t Ye t i , s i h lsn Kuchma received the pained acquiescence of the West, which accepted the validity of t e results even with its widespread h government interference and irregularities at the polls. If the touchstone of state p l t c i m re elite survivalas opposed oiis s e to socioeconomic developmentYe t i lsns and Kuchmas experiences re l c t a t e fet ht h virtual democratic variant can be an attractive one. Russia may just have stumbled onto a formula for retaining power that will re a n i s c r t i t u rency in the next millennium. Several unique attributes of Russian il social and historical experience wl unquestionably influence political development. First, Russia (and the Soviet Union beforei) t possesses extensive experience in the global competition for power. I t i c n u y,a n hs etr s well as the next, global power projection has become a key aspect of the state system. Jackson notes that, with few exceptions, others either penetrated states or they became the objects of territorial aggrandizement. Russia has vivid memories of both a d i s ruling elites would find it intolerable n t to again be at the mercy of the state system. The present dictates of the IMF already grate against its sensibilities and Russia has teptnilt b frls ptetwt te h oeta o e a es ain ih h constraints imposed by international assistance than many other societies. N ATOs war in Kosovo further re n o i f rced t e d s re on the part of Russian e i e t h ei lts o position themselves out of the grasp of W estern institutions they perceive as depriving them of sovereignty. T e re h newed Russian offensive in Chechnya r eflects how skillfully Yeltsin and Putin have exploited the vocabulary of Western pltc,a o i i s rguing that their actions follow the NATO precedent and seek the objective o d s roying alleged Chechen terro i t . f et rss

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I ronically, were the We t t p i t t t e s o on o h blatant hypocrisy of such claims, the Russians could point to Western connivance in the deformation of genuine democracy in Russia and wonder why hypocrisy i tlrbei oea s o e a l n n rea yet not another. The globalization of capital and investment flows has compounded the p redicament of quasi-states as economic p rocesses compromise sovereignty without r esorting to territorial expansion. While much of the rest of the world has grappled w t t i reality for several decades, Russia ih hs r emained insulated behind the walls of communism. To the loss of imperial territory and status in 1991 came a second shock to the Russian psyche: economic p rogre s required a loss of control over s domestic life. The travails of economic r eform for the ru i g e i e a t u l t l l n l t re h s i t e more than a prelude to the larger need to o rganize societal forc s t re t re to Russia e o so the full sovereignty of a nation-state. I ronically,t erequirements of competition h in the state system appear as the only factors capable of persuading Russian eie t tk terscea olgtos lts o ae hi oitl biain seriouslyeven if only in an instrumental s n e Absent a major shock to the syses. temthe death of Yeltsin, mass social unrest, or clan warfareglobal rivalry will eventually compel Russias rulers to focus on raising productivity and restoring the isiuin (.. temltr)ta cn ntttos ie, h iiay ht a r eturn Russia to the concert of Gre t a Powers. A second factor with a distinctly unique impact on Russia concerns still unresolved questions of national identity. Where African societies can at least point to the colonial metropole as the arc i e t o htc f their despair, R s i l e a t e h a t o a usa is t h er f multinational empire that denied the existence of nations. Recent imperial memory lingers in the Russian consciousness, interacting with memories of power lost. These myths of empire a powerful; re so powerful that, as S. Frederick Starr notes, they are capable of penetrating W estern scholarly discourse. To the extent that the Soviet mythic legacy continues to dominate Russian thinking, elites will find fertile soil in the public mood for building a Russian state that matches the contours

of the communist era. Even if not expansionist in content, such a conception retains the close link between identity and state power. National self-definition, most likely with prodding fro s a e e i e , w l m tt lts il r einforce the sentiments arising from the loss of sovereignty and contro i t e s a e l n h tt system. Permeating all of these issues is the central tension between empire and multiethnic polity, which recent experience r eveals ends either in conflict or disintegrato. in Finally, Russia possesses a human and natural resource base that defies comparison with the African continent. Even with its environment and population t reatened, the enormous investment in h education and training in the natural sciences by the Soviet regime has left a skilled workforce that can be harnessed quickly. Unlike postcolonial societies that tend to bristle with economists and political scientists, Russia can marshal trained engineers, physicists, chemists, and other p rofessions essential to catalyzing a postSoviet economic transition. The darker scenario is that the cumulative impact of these factors will c reate a dynamic environment that presses the Russian political elite to find a way to cobble together a social system that re so t res the link between politics and societal development, even as it remains distinct f rom the Wet A key element of its distincs. tiveness will be continuing rivalry with the W est, if not for ideological primacy then for a s ff c e t s a o resources to assure u i i n h re f independent survival. Given the ro e o f reign assistance in l f o ssann ti saeo a u t i i g h s t t f ffairs, supporters o f reign aid will find this an uncomfortf o able scenario. Consequently, they would be tempted to argue that a virtuous cycle might eventually emergea kind of selfperfection process, whereby a Russian state is gradually constructed resembling W estern experience. A s l - n e s e e i e e f i t re t d l t may not wish it, so this logic goes, but the exigencies of the global ro e i h p s t l t oe o r s o compel state and economy to e t re function moree e t v l ff c i e y. Is such a gradualist thesis that holds out the promise of Russia being made modern piecemeal too optimistic?

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P robably so; for, as Robert Jackson has pointed out, even in corrupt societies governments can set standards of probity and try to enforce them. Hence, even if Russia were to develop a moree i i n ff c e t economy and a modestly responsive pltclsse,i wl crywt i te oiia ytm t il ar ih t h historical imprint of the shadow state. The saewl p sreisp t t i l re e v t redatory pro l v t e ciiis and the elements of a democratic polity and civil society will be tolerated only to the extent they do not infringe upon the imperatives of elite political survival. The developmental trajectory established during the recomposition of power will r equire extraordinary eff r t d v r t a ot o iet o more constructive dire t o . cin Favorable conditions can also be undone by the tragic tendency of Russia to fall victim to ideologues. Communist ru e s lr evinced little concern as they savaged their own society and jeopardized its future f r o the sake of a doctrine from which only a few stood to benefit. Sadly, Russias new r eformers appear to have emulated their communist predecessors in this respect. Most disturbing, however, i t a R s i s ht usa can avoid this fate and head in a more constructive direction principally by basing a vision of the future on its legacy as a global power. S c e s u reform will bring ucsfl with it a more contentious international environment. In musing on the Russian future , David Remnick (1997) sees no reason why Russia cannot overcome its absolutist past much in the same way that Germany and Japan did during this century. T e i h re s considerable truth to this, as Russia today has opened doors of opportunity that p reviously never existed. Yet comparison with German experience can be deceptive. W eimar Germany struggled with thre t t as o security and stability following military defeat and economic collapse, only to conclude that regime survival lay in permitting rulers to operate above the legal o rder. Such comparisons are l s i s ru es nt c t v t a t e African case because they are ie hn h

insufficiently attentive to fundamental d ffrences between postwar German and i e Japanese development and post-cold war Russia. The path of the former never entailed the moral degradation and wholesale criminalization that has been a distinguishing feature o reform-era f Russia. German and Japanese cultures and political institutions, moreover, recognize the autonomy of society and economy, even as their state traditions permit these spheres to be shaped and molded. Euro pean states have developed care u l fly calibrated institutional mechanisms for the deployment of state power in pursuit of socioeconomic development. In Russia the exercise of power remains a much cruder a ar. ffi The unique factors affecting Russian elites suggest that the opportunity exists to modify the African shadow state to pro duce a substantial measure of economic s a i i y. The price for success within this tblt framework will be high, as Russia will r etain its authoritarian character and state tradition. The associated criminality, violence, and excessive concentration of power that envelope such a state will confound hopes for a democratic breakt rough and sap the productive potential h o s c e y. More disturbing from the f oit W estern standpoint, however, w l b t e il e h subordination of constitutionalism and cvlsceyt tedcae o eiepltc. ii oit o h itts f lt oiis The charitable explanation is that political elites, unwilling to believe that their subjects or their rivals will be constitutionalists, feel obliged to be authoritarian. Whatever the reason, pre e t reform sn policies open the opportunity for Russias r eturn to the community of great powers; but the deformations of state power that r eform has institutionalized carry the unsettling promise that the next century will be one of challenge for the We t i i s s n t r elations with Russia. That is the discomforting legacy of Western assistance to Russia.

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Illarionov,Andrei. Kak byl organizovan ro s s i f n n o y k i i , p r s I & I , Vo ro y siki iasvi rzs at I p s ekonomiki (November and December 1998) nos. 11 & 12. I r e , Arturo. The changing Role of the State: Institutional Dimensions, Working Paper, sal WPS 495, Public Sector Management and Private Sector Development, The World Bank, August 1990. Jackson, Robert H. Quasi-states: Sovere g t International Relations, and the Third Wo l i n y, rd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre s 1 9 ) s, 90. Joseph, Richard e . State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, C . Lynne Rienner, , d o: 1999). _____. The Reconfiguration of Power in Late Twentieth-Century Africa, in Joseph, Richard e . State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, C . Lynne Rienner, 1 9 ) d o: 99. Kosals, L. Tenevaia ekonomika kak osobennost rossiskogo kapitalizma, Vo ro y p s ekonomiki (October 1998) no. 10. Malia, Martin. Communist Legacy Foreclosed Choices, The New Yo k Times, Marc 2 , r h 7 1999. s e n y s rom the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cam_____. Russia Under We t r E e : F bridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard Pre s 1 9 ) s, 99. Mandeville, Bernard The Fable of the Bees and Other Wr t n s, abridge and edited by E.J. . iig Hundert (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997). Maravall, Jose Maria. Myth of the Authoritarian AdvantageJournal of Democracy 5 ( 9 4 . 19) Mau, Vladimir. Politicheskaia priroda i uroki finansovogo krizisa Vo rosy ekonomiki p (November 1998) no. 11 . Mbembe, Achille. Pouvoir, violence et accumulation, P l t q e A r c i e 3 ( 9 0 . oiiu fian 9 19) McFaul, Michael. The Demon Wi h n The Moscow Times, Marc 2 1 9 . ti, h , 99 Michalak, Wieslaw. Assistance to Transitions,in Richard Grant and Jan Nijman, eds. T e h G o a C i i i F reign Aid (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Pre s 1 9 ) lbl rss n o s, 98. Mkandawire, Thandika, Crisis Management and the Making of Choiceless Democracies, in Joseph, Richard e . State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, C . Lynne d o: Rienner, 1 9 ) 99. Nagy,Pro k . The Meltdown of the Russian State: The Collapse and the Future o t e S a e i i sa f h tt n Russia (London: Edward Elgar, 1 9 ) 99. Radaev,V. ro i n s l i a v rossiiskikh delovykh ontnosheniakh, Vo rosy ekonomiki (OctoO l aili p ber 1988) no. 10. Reddaway, Peter and Dimitri Glinski (Vassiliev). What Went Wr ong in Russia? The Ravages of Market Bolshevism, Journal of Democracy ( p i 1 9 ) Arl 99. Remnick, David. Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia (New York: Random House, 1997). Reno, Wi l a . Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge lim University Pre s 1 9 ) s, 95. _____.Sierra Leone: Weak States and the New Sovereignty Game, in Leonardo A. Vi l l n a d P i l p A. Huxtable, eds. The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintelao n hli gration and Reconfiguration (Boulder, C . Lynne Rienner, 1 9 ) o: 98. Rothchild, Donald. Hegemony and State Softness: Some Variations in Elite Reponses, Zaki Erg s e . The African State in Tr n i i n (New York: St. Martins Pre s 1 8 ) a, d asto s, 97. Russian Economic Reform: Crossing the Threshold of Structural Change (Washington, DC: The W orld Bank, 1992). Schatzberg, Michael G. The Dialectics of Oppre s o i Z i (Bloomington, IN: Indiana s i n n a re University Pre s 1 8 ) s, 98.

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Shane, Scott. Russia, Though Muddling, Will Recover Its Imperial Role, The Baltimore Sun, Marc 7 1 9 . h , 99 S i j , I s . Class Struggles in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 1975). hvi sa Simes, Dimitri K. A t r t e C l a s : R s i S e s I s P a e a a G f e h o l p e u s a e k t l c s reat Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1 9 ) 99. S a r,S F t r . rederick. Introduction: the Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, in The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia,S F . rederick Starr, ed. (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994). Stavrakis, Peter J. Bull in a China Shop: USAIDs Post-Soviet Mission, Demokratizatsiya 4 (Spring 1996) no. 2. _____. The East Goes South: International Aid and Convergence in Africa and Eurasia, in Beyond State Crisis? The Quest for the Efficacious State in Africa and Eurasia, Mark R. Beissinger and M. Crawford Young, eds., forthcoming. t _____. Shadow Politics: The Russian State in the 21s Century U S Army War College, Strate.. gic Studies Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, December 1998. _____. The Soft State and the Emergence of Russian Regional Politics, in Michael Kraus and Ronald Liebowitz, eds. Russia and Eastern Europe After Communism: The Search for New Political, Economic, and Security Systems (Boulder, Co.: Westview Pre s 1 9 ) s, 96. _____. State Building in Post-Soviet Russia: The Chicago Boys and the Decline of Administrative Capacity, Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #254, October 1993. Summers, Lawrence. Forward, in Stephan Haggard and Sylvia Maxfield, eds. Vo i g f r tn o Reform (New York: Oxford University Pre s 1 9 ) s, 94. Tanzi, Vi o e . Trasnsition to Market: Studies in Fiscal Reform (Washington DC: International t, d Monetary Fund, 1993). Villalon, Leonard A. and Phillip A. Huxtable, eds. T e A r c n S a e a a C i i a J n t re o h fia tt t rtcl ucu : Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder, C . Lynne Rienner, 1 9 ) o: 98. Van de Walle, Nicolas. Globalization and African Democracy, in Joseph, Richard ed. State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, C . Lynne Rienner, 1 9 ) o: 99. W edel, Janine. Clique-Run Organizations and U.S. Economic A d An Institutional Analyi: ss Demokratizatsiya 4 ( a l 1 9 ) n . 4 i, Fl 96 o . _____. Collision and Collusion: The Strange case of Assistance to Central and Eastern Euro e p (New York: St. Martins Pre s 1 9 ) s, 99. Young, M. Crawford and Thomas Turner,The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Pre s 1 8 ) s, 95.

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Notes 1 An unspoken yet important factor that buoyed hopes of Western policymakers was the . belief that Russia was a part of Europe and, as such, possessed intellectual and cultural r esourc s required to avoid the disastrous failure s p e s o revalent on the African continent. Unlike Yugoslavia, whose violent disintegration led The Economist to deem it a disappointing spectacle of tribal politics in otherwise civil Europe, the USSRs relatively peaceful disintegration demonstrated that, for the time being, the successor states were considered better able to manage the transition from Communism. 2. We also now have a much better appreciation of the fact that it will have negligible policy impact. Despite clear and persuasive evidence of the deficiencies of assistance p rograms, Western governments appear firmly committed to permanently devoting a portion of their national wealth to foreign aid. 3 A note of caution: Africa is used here i t e s n e o referring to a set of syndromes . n h es f commonly found in many, b t n t a l African states. Moreover, some sub-Saharan states u o l, have actually been far more successful in political and economic development than Russia. 4. U.S. aid personnel were a s remarkable unprepared fore dealing with the former Soviet lo r egion. See Section III below for a discussion of this. 5. The Wo l B n , f r i s p r , p r d a k o t a t roceeded in the issuance of the second $250 million tranche, after formally concluding there was no impropriety. The money, however, h s a never been found. 6. Russian elites tolerated this process but for diffre t reasons. The mutability of elite e n constellations under Yeltsin meant that even if you were down, you were n t y t o t o e u. Hence, it was better to find a sinecure in Moscow, bide your time and hope to re n e t isr yourself into the process at a later date. The example of this par excellence was Chubais, who rotated in and out of government three times. Chernomyrdin was set to do the same i 19. n 98 7. This includes the present author as well, who earlier maintained that Russian regionalism was moving toward the institutionalization of federalism, (Stavrakis, 1996). 8. Richard Morningstar, former U.S. Coordinator of Assistance to the Newly Independent States, after years of dismissing Russian regions as marginal factors, eventually conceded their importance in 1997 and created the Russian Regional Initiative. Of course, by then, r eform in Russia was five years old. 9 Veliki Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prusak has admitted that the August 1998 financial . crisis has had a profound chilling eff c o f reign investments in his region; interview et n o with the author,August 4, 1999. 10. David White recently noted that the Chairman of Russian Central Electoral Commission during the vote admitted that the re e f rendum, while receiving a plurality of the popular vote, probably fell short of the absolute majority required by Russian law for adoption. Confirmation of this surprising admission is unlikely, as many of the ballots were d s ro e i a f re shortly after the ballot; Kennan Institute, April 1, 1997. et yd n i 11. The author also interviewed Boldyrev on this theme in December 1996. 12. In a subsequent interview, Chubais claimed to have conned the IMF out of this money, reasoning that if the truth were known the IMF and Western investor would abandon Russia and reform. Chubais subsequently responded to this allegation, expressing r egret that his words were i t r reted in this manner. He did not, however, c t g r c l y nep aeoial deny the substance of the accusation, or demand a re r c i n tato. 1 . S rg i Aleksashenko, former Deputy Chairman of the Russian Central Bank, conceded 3 e e that the sequestering of bank funds was done to protect them from We t r c d t r . s e n re i o s FIMACO was a French corporation chartered in Jersey. Surprisingly, i w s 7 p rcent t a 8 e owned by the Russian government. The reform team had thus deftly exploited western

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financial practice to securely channel money to themselvesout of the reach of cre i o s dtr. 1. A case with striking similarities to that of Russia is the Philippines, where Paul 4 Hutchcro t h s recently described the relationships between a weak, patrimonial state and f a a powerful oligarchy of bankers (Hutchcro t 1 9 ) T e recent collapse of the Russian f, 98. h banking system indicates that, despite its weakened status, the Philippine state is still faring better than its Russian counterpart in reaching compromise with social forc s e. 1. A similar example is the unsparing criticism Jeff Sachs had for the first Russian 5 rey Central Bank Chairman, Viktor Gerashchenko, whom Sachs described as the worlds worst Central banker. Gerashchenko was no prize, but the revelations that his successor, Sergei Dubinin profited by investing Central Bank reserves and possibly pocketing the p rofits does little to distinguish high-minded reformers from their communist predecessr. os 1.I 6 ronically, postwar Germany and Japan were p rovided with such minimal social and economic guarantees. The United States permitted the protection of some industries, r easoningcorrectlythat rapid economic reconstruction was impossible without a vibrant core of economic activity. Of course, in the 1940s, economic science had not yet graduated to the stage of neoclassical economics. Moreover, i t e 1 9 s t e was no n h 9 0 , h re longer a competing power center in the international center that might make a better off r. e 1. The Independent, March 15, 1997; as cited in Johnsons List. An even more blatant 7 expropriation of western interests occurred last autumn when the Russian government terminated the work of NM Rothschild in developing a US$1 billion telecommunications share o e The government turned it over to MOST Bank and Alfa Bank, both of which are ffr. members of the charmed group of seven The Financial Times, November 26, 1996, p. 1.

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