ISBN: 9780815736448

Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Unions collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford G… Mehr…

Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Unions collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy argue that Russias geography, history, and monumental mistakes perpetrated by Soviet planners have locked it into a dead-end path to economic ruin. Shattering a number of myths that have long persisted in the West and in Russia, The Siberian Curse explains why Russias greatest assetsits gigantic size and Siberias natural resourcesare now the source of one its greatest weaknesses. For seventy years, driven by ideological zeal and the imperative to colonize and industrialize its vast frontiers, communist planners forced people to live in Siberia. They did this in true totalitarian fashion by using the GULAG prison system and slave labor to build huge factories and million-person cities to support them. Today, tens of millions of people and thousands of large-scale industrial enterprises languish in the cold and distant places communist planners put themnot where market forces or free choice would have placed them. Russian leaders still believe that an industrialized Siberia is the key to Russias prosperity. As a result, the country is burdened by the ever-increasing costs of subsidizing economic activity in some of the most forbidding places on the planet. Russia pays a steep price for continuing this follyit wastes the very resources it needs to recover from the ravages of communism. Hill and Gaddy contend that Russias future prosperity requires that it finally throw off the shackles of its Soviet past, by shrinking Siberias cities. Only by facilitating the relocation of population to westernRussia, closer to Europe and its markets, can Russia achieve sustainable economic growth. Unfortunately for Russia, there is no historical precedent for shrinking cities on the scale that will be required. Downsizing Siberia will be a costly and wrenching process. But there is no alternative. Russia cannot afford to keep the cities communist planners left for it out in the cold. The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold Hill, Fiona / Gaddy, Clifford G., Brookings Institution Press<

ISBN: 0815736444

Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Union's collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford … Mehr…

Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Union's collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy argue that Russia's geography, history, and monumental mistakes perpetrated by Soviet planners have locked it into a dead-end path to economic ruin. Shattering a number of myths that have long persisted in the West and in Russia, The Siberian Curse explains why Russia's greatest assets--its gigantic size and Siberia's natural resources--are now the source of one its greatest weaknesses. For seventy years, driven by ideological zeal and the imperative to colonize and industrialize its vast frontiers, communist planners forced people to live in Siberia. They did this in true totalitarian fashion by using the GULAG prison system and slave labor to build huge factories and million-person cities to support them. Today, tens of millions of people and thousands of large-scale industrial enterprises languish in the cold and distant places communist planners put them--not where market forces or free choice would have placed them. Russian leaders still believe that an industrialized Siberia is the key to Russia's prosperity. As a result, the country is burdened by the ever-increasing costs of subsidizing economic activity in some of the most forbidding places on the planet. Russia pays a steep price for continuing this folly--it wastes the very resources it needs to recover from the ravages of co 20th century,business and investing,communism and socialism,demography,development and growth,economic conditions,economics,environmental economics,history,ideologies and doctrines Communism & Socialism, Brookings Institution Press<

ISBN: 9780815736448

" Hill and Gaddy frame the problems of Siberia more clearly, and offer policy recommendations which are more concrete and coherent, than any previous analyses of Siberia from Russian or f… Mehr…

" Hill and Gaddy frame the problems of Siberia more clearly, and offer policy recommendations which are more concrete and coherent, than any previous analyses of Siberia from Russian or foreign sources of which I am aware." -- Robert Cottrell, New York Review of Books Media > Book, [PU: Brookings Institution Press]<