Americans take for granted that public institutions such as schools and courts will function in an effective, predictable fashion. Contemporary Russia shows what happens when they do not. People's lives are thrown into turmoil, and how they cope can become part of the problem.
References
1.
BlasiJoseph R.KroumovaMayaKruseDouglas. Kremlin Capitalism: The Privatization of the Russian Economy.Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1997. This is an informative, accessible, and relatively balanced account of the Yeltsin-era economic reforms.
2.
BurawoyMichaelKrotovPavelLytkinaTatyana. “Domestic Involution: How Women Organize Survival in a North Russian City.” In Russia in the New Century, ed. BonnellVictoriaBreslauerGeorge. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. The authors provide richly detailed accounts of the survival strategies households in a northern region of Russia use to cope with wage arrears and other aspects of institutional breakdown.
3.
LedenevaAlena. Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchanges.New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. This study is a sociologically-informed history of how networks and close-knit circles became so important in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.
4.
LievenAnatol. Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. This book examines the decay of Russia's institutions through the prism of the first war in Chechnya.
5.
Program on New Approaches to Russian Security. http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/. This website offers a series of nearly 300 brief, non-technical “policy memos” written by American and Russian experts on different aspects of Russian politics and society.
6.
SperlingValerie, ed. Building the Russian State: Institutional Crisis and the Quest for Democratic Governance.Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. This is a collection of essays detailing developments within different Russian institutions.
