Now expanded to cover the consequences of Russia's 1998 financial collapse, this book focuses on the social consequences of a modern-day great depression. The text examines the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of Russia's leap into capitalism. The topics covered include: the emergence of the "new poor"; the recruitment of a business elite; the changing social and economic status of women; and the impact of marketization on employment. The study draws on a range of statistics and survey research data to present a portrait of the lives and circumstances of comtemporary Russians.

This book examines economic and political polarisation in post-Soviet Russia, and in particular analyses the development of rural inequality. It discusses how rural inequality has developed in post-Soviet Russia, and how it differs from the Soviet period, and goes on to look at the factors that affect rural stratification and inequality, using human and social capital, profession, gender, and village location as independent variables. The book uses survey data from rural households and fieldwork in Russia in order to highlight the multiplicity of divisions that act as fault lines in contemporary rural Russia.

This book analyzes the food revolution that has occurred in Russia since the late 1980s, documenting the transformation in systems of production, supply, distribution, and consumption. It examines the dominant actors in the food system; explores how the state regulates food; considers changes in patterns of food trade interactions with other states; and discusses how all this and changing habits of consumption have impacted consumers. It contrasts the grim food situation of 1980s and 1990s with the much better food situation that prevails at present and sets the food revolution in the context of the wider consumer revolution, which has affected fashion, consumer electronics, and other sectors of the economy.

Aiming to explain many Russians' ambivalence to recent changes, this work examines the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of reform, its impact on the socioeconomic structure of the population, and the ways in which these changes violate social perceptions of equity and fairness.

This ambitious work is the definitive account of Russia's land reform initiatives from the late 1980s to today. In Russia, a country controlling more land than any other nation, land ownership is central to structures of power, class division, and agricultural production. The aim of Russian land reform for the past thirty years--to undo the collectivization of the Soviet era and encourage public ownership--has been largely unsuccessful. To understand this failure, Stephen Wegren examines contemporary land reform policies in terms of legislation, institutional structure, and human behavior. Using extensive survey data, he analyzes household behaviors in regard to land ownership and usage based on socioeconomic status, family size, demographic distribution, and regional differences. Wegren's study is important and timely, as Russian land reform will have a profound effect on Russia's ability to compete in an era of globalization.

The enormously complex changes triggered by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe were nowhere more ambiguous than in the heartland of the Soviet bloc, Russia itself. Here the population was divided on all the most fundamental questions of post-communist transition: economic reforms, the Communist Party, the borders of the state, even the definition of the Russian 'nation' itself. Russians also faced plummeting living standards and chronic uncertainty. In a matter of months, Russia was apparently demoted from 'evil empire' to despondent poor relation of the prosperous West. Yet the country also seemed alarmingly open to all manner of political outcomes. Russia deserves our attention now as much as ever, because it raises so many of the big questions about how societies operate in the modern world.

This unique study provides an original, nitty-gritty view of the true nature and operation of Russia's state bureaucracy from the imperial period to the present, including the Putin presidency. The only book-length exploration of the problems and deficiencies of Russian bureaucracy since tsarist times, this detailed work sheds important new light on Russian public administration, an often-overlooked but key barrier to Russian normalization and democratization.