This work on the industrial sociology of the USSR examines how the structure of Soviet bureaucracy prevents industry making technical innovations, even though individual managers, using their initiative, try to introduce them. The author argues that this restraint on new inventions is an important cause of the failure of Soviet industry in recent years, and illustrates his points with case studies from a range of Siberian industries, which have been recently hit by strikes.

"This work on the industrial sociology of the USSR examines how the structure of Soviet bureaucracy prevents industry making technical innovations, even though individual managers, using their initiative, try to introduce them. The author argues that this restraint on new inventions is an important cause of the failure of Soviet industry in recent years, and illustrates his points with case studies from a range of Siberian industries, which have been recently hit by strikes."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Tracing the history of economic sanctions from the blockades of World War I to the policing of colonial empires and the interwar confrontation with fascism, Nicholas Mulder combines political, economic, legal, and military history to reveal how a coercive wartime tool was adopted as an instrument of peacekeeping by the League of Nations.This timely study casts an overdue light on why sanctions are widely considered a form of war, and why their unintended consequences are so tremendous.

"State control of industry in Russia during the War was realized mainly through the regulation of the market, that is to say, through the regulation of commerce. The control of the market was the most effective method at the State's command for the regulation of industry. On the other hand, the State regulation of industry had a direct influence on the regulation of the market. Measures such as the control of prices, and the distribution of raw material, of fuel, and of finished articles were primarily measures of a commercial nature, but they had an influence on production, on its increase or decrease, extending their action to the whole of industry, whether working for military defense, or for the needs of the civil population. The present work, consequently, deals with both these aspects." --Author's foreword.

WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers’ everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the ‘other life’ in today’s Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of ‘habitability’, commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.

In 1991, a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union and enjoyed one of the greatest transfers of wealth ever seen, claiming ownership of some of the most valuable petroleum, natural gas and metal deposits in the world. By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires.