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During the transition to a market economy, the population of Russia has experienced widespread economic uncertainty and anomie, and fertility has declined to unprecedentedly low levels. In contrast to western Europe, where very low fertility in large measure reflects postponement of childbearing and increasing childlessness, very low fertility in Russia has been primarily driven by the drastic reduction of second and higher-parity births. This study shows that two factors--subjective well-being and participation in informal work--are significantly associated with wanting and having more than one child. Subjective well-being is a psychological resource that helps people maintain a positive attitude, while participation in informal work may be hypothesized as indicative of an ability to act regardless of labor market insecurity. Although these two factors are not directly related, they can be seen as indicators of the willingness to assume additional responsibilities, including childbearing and childrearing.

Sixteen years after the Soviet Union's demise, the Russian economy can still be appropriately characterized as transitional. The authors shed light on ambiguities surrounding this status through an exploration of four questions related to issues of interest to government decisionmakers.

Why does a world power like Russia -- with its enormous wealth of raw materials, its respectable level of education, & its partially advanced technology -- continue to produce an average income typical of a moderately developed industrialized country? The causes are, first of all, its geographical & geopolitical conditions for development. In the global competition among empires for colonies overseas, continental Russia's starting point was a poor one. Furthermore, expansion into the thinly populated expanses of northern Asia did not force an intensification of the economy. More important are cultural influences, especially the understanding of state & society in Orthodox Europe. In Muscovy, the balance of power between prince, nobility, church, & cities shifted in lopsided fashion to an autocracy along the lines of the Byzantine model. In competition with Western industrial powers, autocracy & a \"state-fixated society\" proved immobile. Over the course of the modern period, the global dynamic of development moved from the Islamic orient & China to the realm of the North Atlantic, where state, ethnic, & religious polymorphism helped find the right balance between too much & too little state. Adapted from the source document.

To survive, all forms of government require popular support, whether voluntary or involuntary. Following the collapse of the Soviet system, Russia's rulers took steps toward democracy, yet under Vladimir Putin Russia has become increasingly undemocratic. This book uses a unique source of evidence, eighteen surveys of Russian public opinion from the first month of the new regime in 1992 up to 2009, to track the changing views of Russians. Clearly presented and sophisticated figures and tables show how political support has increased because of a sense of resignation that is even stronger than the unstable benefits of exporting oil and gas. Whilst comparative analyses of surveys on other continents show that Russia's elite is not alone in being able to mobilize popular support for an undemocratic regime, Russia provides an outstanding caution that popular support can grow when governors reject democracy and create an undemocratic regime.

The former Soviet empire spanned eleven time zones and contained half the world's forests; vast deposits of oil, gas and coal; various ores; major rivers such as the Volga, Don and Angara; and extensive biodiversity. These resources and animals, as well as the people who lived in the former Soviet Union - Slavs, Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, Kazakhs and Tajiks, indigenous Nenets and Chukchi - were threatened by environmental degradation and extensive pollution. This environmental history of the former Soviet Union explores the impact that state economic development programs had on the environment. The authors consider the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the establishment of an extensive system of nature preserves, the effect of Stalinist practices of industrialization and collectivization on nature, and the rise of public involvement under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and changes to policies and practices with the rise of Gorbachev and the break-up of the USSR.

In Putin's Labor Dilemma , Stephen Crowley investigates how the fear of labor protest has inhibited substantial economic transformation in Russia. Putin boasts he has the backing of workers in the country's industrial heartland, but as economic growth slows in Russia, reviving the economy will require restructuring the country's industrial landscape. At the same time, doing so threatens to generate protest and instability from a key regime constituency. However, continuing to prop up Russia's Soviet-era workplaces, writes Crowley, could lead to declining wages and economic stagnation, threatening protest and instability. Crowley explores the dynamics of a Russian labor market that generally avoids mass unemployment, the potentially explosive role of Russia's monotowns, conflicts generated by massive downsizing in \"Russia's Detroit\" (Tol'yatti), and the rapid politicization of the truck drivers movement. Labor protests currently show little sign of threatening Putin's hold on power, but the manner in which they are being conducted point to substantial chronic problems that will be difficult to resolve. Putin's Labor Dilemma demonstrates that the Russian economy must either find new sources of economic growth or face stagnation. Either scenario-market reforms or economic stagnation-raises the possibility, even probability, of destabilizing social unrest.

What Muscovites get in a soup kitchen run by the Christian Church of Moscow is something far more subtle and complex-if no less necessary and nourishing-than the food that feeds their hunger. InNot by Bread Alone,the first full-length ethnographic study of poverty and social welfare in the postsocialist world, Melissa L. Caldwell focuses on the everyday operations and civil transactions at CCM soup kitchens to reveal the new realities, the enduring features, and the intriguing subtext of social support in Russia today. In an international food aid community, Caldwell explores how Muscovites employ a number of improvisational tactics to satisfy their material needs. She shows how the relationships that develop among members of this community-elderly Muscovite recipients, Russian aid workers, African student volunteers, and North American and European donors and volunteers-provide forms of social support that are highly valued and ultimately far more important than material resources. InNot by Bread Alonewe see how the soup kitchens become sites of social stability and refuge for all who interact there-not just those with limited financial means-and how Muscovites articulate definitions of hunger and poverty that depend far more on the extent of one's social contacts than on material factors. By rethinking the ways in which relationships between social and economic practices are theorized-by identifying social relations and social status as Russia's true economic currency-this book challenges prevailing ideas about the role of the state, the nature of poverty and welfare, the feasibility of Western-style reforms, and the primacy of social connections in the daily lives of ordinary people in post-Soviet Russia.

How do individuals decide to exercise their democratic rights? This 2006 book argues that they first assess their economic autonomy, meaning their ability to make a living independent of government authorities. Before individuals consider whether their resources and organizational abilities are adequate to act on their interests, they calculate the risk of political activism to their livelihood. This is particularly evident in regions of the world where states monopolize the economy and thus can readily harass activists at their workplaces. Economic autonomy links capitalism and democracy through individuals' calculations about activism. Accounts of activists' decisions about establishing independent media, leading political organizations, and running for office and descriptions of government harassment in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, along with examples from most regions of the world, illustrate these arguments. Economic autonomy and the interaction among democratic rights help explain the global proliferation of hybrid regimes, governments that display both democratic and authoritarian characteristics.

In 1991, a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union and enjoyed one of the greatest transfers of wealth ever seen, claiming ownership of some of the most valuable petroleum, natural gas and metal deposits in the world. By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires. These self-styled oligarchs were accused of using guile, intimidation and occasionally violence to reap these rewards. Marshall I. Goldman argues against the line that the course adopted by President Yeltsin was the only one open to Russia, since an examination of the reform process in Poland shows that a more gradual and imaginative approach worked there with less corruption and a wider share of benefits. The Piratization of Russia is an accessible, timely and topical volume that is required reading for those with an interest in Russian reform. Its appeal will range from students, academics, economists and politicians to the interested lay-reader keen to understand Russia's problems and learn how they could have been avoided. Marshall I. Goldman is Davis Professor of Russian Economics, Emeritus at Wellsley College and Associate Director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard, USA. 1. Russia's Financial Bucaneers: The Wild and Wooly East 2. Setting the Stage: The Russian Economy in the Post-Communist Era 3. The Legacy of the Czarist Era: Untenable and Unsavory Roots 4. It's Broke, So Fix It: The Stalinist and Gorbachev Legacies 5. Privatization: Good Intentions but the Wrong Advice at the Wrong Time 6. The Nomenklatura O ligarchs 7. The Upstart Oligarchs 8. FIMACO: The Russian Central Bank and Money Laundering at the Highest 9. Corruption, Crime and the Russian Mafia 10. Who Says There Was No Better Way? 11. Confidence or Con Game: What Will it Take? 'A tale of the making of rich oligarchs in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of the mafia’s role in these reforms.' - The Independent Review 'A clear, freewheeling [account of] ...the insider-dominated transfer of public property to a small number of \"oligarchs.\"' - Foreign Affairs 'A testament to his longtime argument that Russia could have -- and should have -- done more to see to it that ordinary people were not left behind by the hastily envisioned new market economy.' - Moscow Times