Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Padma Desai, professor of comparative economic systems at Columbia University, discussed her new book titled Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin. The book is made up of interviews with influential leaders, such as Boris Yeltsin, George Soros, Yegor Gaidar, and Anatoly Chubais. According to Desai, the book is intended to be an archive of historical source material that would also read well to someone unfamiliar with the time period.

During her talk, Desai gave an overview and evaluation of the reform process in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, drawing on material from her book. She praised the enormous changes that have taken place in Russia, saying that the country looks very different than when she first visited it. The economy is also growing at a steady pace. At the same time, she said she was worried about Russia's corruption, the situation in Chechnya, and Russia's foreign policy in "the near abroad."

She credited Boris Yeltsin and his team with demolishing the planned economy and the authoritarian political system that accompanied it. His main accomplishment from a historical perspective, according to Desai, is that he planted the seed of political liberalism in Russia, a country that had just emerged from decades of totalitarian rule. Desai stated that it was unfortunate that Yeltsin and his team had implemented the "shock therapy" plan to liberalize prices and privatize industrial assets without a greater concern for what would happen to the "have-nots" in Russian society during the transition period.

In fact, one of the reasons that Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin to be his successor, according to Desai, is that Putin was not a "maximalist," a word Yeltsin used to describe his former team, including Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar. This meant that Putin was not interested in pushing pure capitalism to the exclusion of all other considerations, and that he would work for a consolidation of Russian society.

Desai summarized the Putin agenda as restoring order and fighting terrorism. In international relations, Putin's main goal is to protect Russia's interests. According to Desai, this means protecting Russia's interests even if it causes a slowing (or halting) of the pace of political liberalization. She placed Putin in the Petrine tradition of reform through imitation of the West, although Putin does not see that democracy and markets are mutually interdependent, as many in the West do.

In her remarks, Desai also made several policy recommendations. She called for "selective engagement," which meant that the West should work to help integrate Russia into Europe and the world economy. At the moment, Desai observed, Russia and the United States have common interests, but lack common values. She argued that only by taking part in international institutions and the world economy would Russia come to adopt the rules and practices of a successful modern economy. She said that continued U.S. efforts to isolate and criticize Russia would only serve to discourage reform and cause further problems in relations between the two countries. She said Europe may be starting to steer an independent course by pursuing trade and closer investment ties with Russia, and that this may eventually lead to Russia becoming a closer partner with the West.