Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed in Russia

Postcommunist transformation has led to quite different results. The starkest example is Russia, which has become a thriving market economy with an average real growth of 7 percent a year for a decade from 1999 to 2008, but Freedom House (2008) ranks it as a "not free" or authoritarian state. In this article, I define what I mean by saying that Russia is a market economy but not democratic. To clarify how this happened, I shall compare democracy to policymaking with regard to a market economy in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I consider to have undergone a revolution. Finally, I shall consider the contradiction that has arisen between an increasingly authoritarian state and an ever wealthier market economy. My argument is that this contradiction is too great to last for long.