How Russia Really Works

<p>During the Soviet era <i>blat</i>--the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures--was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In <i>How Russia Really Works</i> Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics business media and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s--from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in alternative techniques of contract and law enforcement.</p><p>Ledeneva discovers ingenuity wit and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations the media politicians and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit if not the letter of the law. The know-how Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia.</p>