Word: russian
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...Jones Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer ’82 about shock therapy, and he’ll tell you that Yeltsin’s privatization plan did just what it was designed to do—successfully destroy the vestiges of state control over the Russian economy...
Most of Shleifer’s argument rests, predictably, on Russia’s economic indicators. He does not, however, ignore Russian politics. He explains away President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine democratic institutions as perfectly ordinary activities for middle-income heads of state, comparing the level of election fraud, voter intimidation and vote-buying in the Russian Federation to those of Argentina and Brazil. So Russia is “normal,” at least according to the conveniently quantifiable indicators economists such as Shleifer use to gauge the economic and political life (or lack...
Kremlinologists who have made their careers by finding evidence for Russian exceptionalism will, undoubtedly, poke holes in Shleifer’s data and analysis in years to come. But the real problem with Shleifer’s book is not that experts will find reasons to object to his often penetrating analysis, which should be treated for what it is—an extremely valuable addition to the literature on the Russian transition...
...book also suffers by association with Shleifer’s now infamous activities as an advisor to former President Boris Yeltsin for the Harvard Initiative for International Development (HIID). Shleifer allegedly invested indirectly in Russian companies affected by the policies he proposed, and Shleifer has since been sued by the U.S. government. He never makes more than oblique references to his work in Russia after the 1997 currency crisis, a point that will surely disappoint readers looking for the defendant’s perspective in the ongoing scandal...
...French, Russian, Midwestern, and Nebraskan ancestry make me among the whitest of white men. Despite a whole life of effort I still can’t dance, and I still can’t jump. I carry the guilt of a privileged position wherever I go. It’s a hard life, that of a white male. Yet wallowing in my own pity, dwelling on the collective tragedies of the white race, and retreating into the ranks of my white brethren fails to provide me with adequate comfort. As a result, I’ve come up with...