It's far more difficult to find foreign political
scientists -- academics, that is -- specializing in Russia who don't
have a clue about what they're talking about. The difference is that
no one expects economists to actually spend any time in the country
they're studying.
Yet Yoshiko Herrera, an associate professor of
government at Harvard University, spent a total of two and a half
years in Samara and Yekaterinburg while working on her recently
published book about "imagined economies" -- what people in the
regions think and how this relates to the economic conditions in
which they live. As it turns out, perceptions of economic reality
are largely dependent on ideological constructions.
The analysis of how such perceptions come about is
very complex, because this process occurs in the heads of millions
of people and is affected by a wide range of factors. But this sort
of analysis is vital. As we have seen in a number of former Soviet
republics, the imagined life "without Moscow" can differ wildly from
the actual situation on the ground, and this collective imagination
can play a far more important role than the most competent,
professional calculations. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that
Herrera's book will ever attract much attention in Russia.
Two years ago, Mark Beissinger published a book on
the rapid evolution of nationalism in the last years of the Soviet
Union -- the result of nearly 15 years' work. Had the Kremlin's spin
doctors read Beissinger's book -- or even glanced at the
introduction -- before parachuting into Ukraine, they might not have
made such a mess of things.
I was wrong to chide foreign economists generally at
the beginning of this column, of course. Russian universities and
institutes use Paul Gregory's book on Russian economic history for
the simple reason that no one has written anything better on the
subject. The work of Richard Ericson (you may recall the term
"industrial feudalism"), Barry Ickes, Clifford Gaddy ("virtual
economy") and others -- not to mention the leading lights of
previous generations -- continues to make an enormous contribution
to the understanding of Russia's economic problems. But it's still
nice to know that political scientists who study Russia are expected
to spend at least a couple of years here.
Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the New Economic
School/CEFIR, is currently at Princeton.
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