Researcher, PhD (economics) /Lappeenranta University of Technology
Kaaramakatu 4 B 17 53810 Lappeenranta
The Emergence of New Russian Elites 1990-2008 and the Changing Distribution of National Income and Wealth
Abstract: The paper attempts to sketch a part of the story of economic transition in Russia. The focus is on institutions, interest groups and their interaction with macroeconomic dynamics and economic structures. The approach of is mainly qualitative. It concentrates on economic elites and other economic interest groups. Two features are important relating to new Russian economic elites. First, the way new economic elites were generally recruited during the first 10 years of change 1987-1997 and secondly how the process of privatization contributed to the birth of new private super-companies governed by the so called economic oligarchs. The shifting power relations and the emerging income and ownership distributions in Russian economy were essentially and critically related to Russian macroeconomic control problems during the first ten years of transition. Once the main macroeconomic control problem had been coped with by 1999, a new development started where the central state power regained part of its former functions. The paper analyses the questions how the new Russian elites were recruited and formed, what happened to the income distribution in Russian economy in 1990-2008, what were the main changes in production concentration and lastly how the regional aspects of economic welfare changed during the near two decades of transition.