Economist Vitali Naishul discusses Russian modernization

Vitali Naishul, economist and president of the Institute for the Study of the Russian Economy, spoke about Russia’s history of political institutions in Burr Hall on Tuesday evening.

Naishul opened the talk with an acknowledgement of two key events in the history of Russian institutionalism: the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Both movements were sparked by a consciousness of the inefficacy of preexisting institutions, Naishul said, and Russians had to create new structures of organization once the old ones had been torn down. This process of recreation, Naishul noted, is very difficult because “institutions are not something that can be built in a few days.”

Though socialist institutions more or less successfully replaced those of the pre-revolutionary era, the pressures to modernize and marketize that Russia faced after 1991 posed greater problems for institution creation, he explained; the economy was admittedly transformed by Yeltsin and subsequent leaders of Russia, but institutions which controlled other spheres of public life such as public health, education and the legal system remained unchanged.

This stagnation in other public arenas, in tandem with the absence of new institutions to take their place, Naishul said, created an “enormous institutional deficit” for the country. In light of these difficulties, Russia’s situation may appear “gloomy” to the outside observer, he added.

Naishul said that the only way to compensate for this paucity of useful governmental structures is to enable the “mass production of institutions,” which must be enabled by fresh ideas for reform. Naishul identified the “scarcity of ideas” as an important obstacle to Russian progress and urged creativity in the conceptualization of new legal and administrative systems.

One way to solve the dearth of ideas, he noted, would be to assign different groups to the improvement of various societal sectors. Another useful tool, Naishul said, could be found in a mechanism capable of compiling ideas for reform from many people, perhaps resembling Wikipedia.

Ideas carry much weight in Russia, Naishul explained, because it is an “ideocentric” society firmly based on the belief that ideas mean more than deeds. This cultural conception dates back to the nation’s independence from Byzantium and still influences Russian attitudes about the worth of particular institutions today.

The lecture, titled “Modernizing Russia and its Institutions: Twenty Years of Reforms” is part of a Speakers Series co-sponsored by the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies, the University Center for Human Values, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and several academic departments.