Freedom, Repression, and Private Property in Russia

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Anna Arutunyan

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781107042148
• eBook ISBN:
  9781107454835
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This study demonstrates how the emergence of private property and a market economy after the Soviet Union's collapse enabled a degree of freedom while simultaneously supporting authoritarianism. Based on case studies, Vladimir Shlapentokh and Anna Arutunyan analyze how private property and free markets spawn feudal elements in society. These elements are so strong in post-Communist Russia that they prevent the formation of a true democratic society, while making it impossible to return to totalitarianism. The authors describe the resulting Russian society as having three types of social organization: authoritarian, feudal and liberal. The authors examine the adaptation of Soviet-era institutions like security forces, the police and the army to free market conditions and how they generated corruption; the belief that the KGB was relatively free from corruption; how large property holdings merge with power and necessitate repression; and how property relations affect government management and suppression.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Freedom, Repression, and Private Property in Russia
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction Private Property as a Source of Both Freedom and Repression – The Russian Case
• 1 Private Property and Big Money in Political Regimes in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
• 2 Ideology and Public Opinion in a Centralized Society and in a Fragmented Society
• 3 Corruption, the Power of the State, and Big Business in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Regimes
• 4 Enemies and the Issue of Legitimization in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Regimes
• 5 Political Police Before and After
• 6 Treatment of Strikers in Soviet and Post-Soviet Times: Novocherkassk and Mezhdurechensk
• 7 Geopolitics, Private Capital, and Legitimacy as Foreign Policy Goals in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
• 8 A Freedom That Putin Dearly Loves – The Right to Leave His Country
• Conclusion The Uniqueness of Putin’s Regime in Light of Russian History
• Bibliography
• Index