Simon Kordonsky 
Socio-Economic Foundations of the Russian Post-Soviet Regime 
The Resource-Based Economy and Estate-Based Social Structure of Contemporary Russia

This monograph discloses the estate-based social structure of contemporary Russia by way of outlining the principles of the USSR’s peculiar estate system, and explaining the new social estates of post-Soviet Russia. Simon Kordonsky distinguishes and describes in particular the currently existing Russian service and support estates. He introduces the notions of a resource-based state and resource-based economy as the political and economic foundations for Russian society’s estate structure. His study demonstrates, moreover, how the method of inventing and institutionalizing threats plays a dominant role in the mode of distribution of scarce resources in such a social system.

The book shows fundamental differences between resource- as well as threat-based economies, on the one side, and traditional risk-based economies, on the other, and discloses what this means for Russia’s future.

O autorze

Dr. Simon G. Kordonsky is Professor of Public Policy as well as Head of the Department of Local Self-Government and of the Laboratory for Municipal Administration at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Kordonsky studied biology at Tomsk State University and worked previously as a researcher at Altai State University as well as the Russian Presidential Administration. He is the author of five Russian monographs and has published papers in, among other journals, Osteuropa, Strategic & Business Intelligence, Otechestvennye zapiski, Mir Rossii, Vek XX i mir, Kentavr, and Mikroekonomika. Kordonsky is also member of the editorial boards of the journals Voprosy obrazovaniia and Voprosy gosudarstvennogo i munitsipal’nogo upravleniia, as well as Chairman of the Expert Council of the Khamovniki Foundation for Social Research (www.khamovniky.ru).



The author of the foreword:

Dr. Svetlana Barsukova is Professor of Economic Sociology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.