Carnegie hosted a book launch of “A Normal Country: Russia After Communism” by Andrei Shleifer.

Andrei Shleifer’s book argues that Russia’s political and economic development after the collapse of the Soviet Union has followed a trend that can be assigned to any other middle income development country such as Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, or South Africa. Due to such a definition, the future trends in Russia’s political and economic development will also resemble the trends found in other middle income countries, although Russia’s status as a super power and a nuclear state will add to some discrepancies in such comparisons. It is unlikely that Russia will move below this position, but it is also uncertain if Russia will ever develop into a fully democratized country such as Poland or the Czech Republic. The volatility of oil prices also lends to some uncertainty in Russia’s future economic development. To learn more about the book, click here.

Simon Johnson, Assistant Director in the Research Department at the IMF, agreed with most of Shleifer’s analysis, and underlined the fact that Russian economic future is in a very unpredictable position since it is an emerging economy. Johnson stated that political development does matter in such cases. He also stated that sometimes growth could be sustained despite limited political freedoms, but warned that the economic crises, if they arise, tend to be larger as well. Please select the link to the right to view Simon Johnson's powerpoint presentation.

Leon Aaron, Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, stated that Shleifer’s book is a true work of scholarship because it clarifies certain aspects, yet stimulates the reader to generate further inquiries. Aaron also noted that the concept of normalcy that Andrei Shleifer has utilized could be extrapolated even further into assessing whether the Russian revolution of the 1990s, and the more recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine, were normal revolutions. If so, perhaps a close analysis of other “normal revolutions” in history could lend an inkling to the implications for Russia’s and Ukraine’s further political and economic development.