How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business by Alena V. Ledeneva (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 769 The final section of this collection focuses on recent attempts to reform the Russian criminal justice system.William Butler begins by assessing the increase inHIV associated with higher levels of intravenous drug use in recent years, and analyses some of the problems with state attempts to implement a policy of 'harm reduction' in this area. Daniel Rodeheaver and James Williams focus on exploring high levels of juvenile crime as a result of the post-socialist transition and highlight inadequacies in the existing state response to juvenile crime. Finally, studies by Adrian Beck and Annette Robertson and Roy King and Laura Piacentini assess two components of the Russian justice system that have proven most resistant to change in the post-Communist period: the police and prison system. Beck and Robertson highlight the slow process of police reform inRussia, in its struggle to adapt from the Communist legacy to a more accountable, democratic culture of policing, while King and Piacentini's study concludes that despite continued problems, there is some evidence of change in theRussian penal system. This is a collection with a broad remit, and succeeds in providing a com prehensive and insightfuloverview of changes to law, crime and justice in Russia in recent years, highlighting a number of positive developments whilst stressing that the longer term forecast for Russia remains uncertain. However, the broad thematic structure of the content also makes it accessible for scholars working in specific areas of this remit to 'dip in and out' of studies particularly relevant to their area of interest. School of History Kelly Hignett Keele University Ledeneva, Alena V. How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices thatShaped Post-Soviet Politics andBusiness. Culture and Society after Socialism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2006. xii + 270 pp. Illustra tions. Figures. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.95: ^2.95 (paperback). Alena Ledeneva has written a lively book on informal practices of business, government and politics in contemporary Russia. She shows that most infor mal practices are carry-overs from the Soviet period and, in some cases, such as collective responsibility, date to the remote tsarist past. Her data come from sixty-two in-depth interviews with elites, business practitioners, journalists and those handling technical business matters such as accountants and lawyers. This database is supplemented by press accounts and by a careful reading of the secondary literature. Ledeneva's key propositions are that contemporary Russia is runmore by informal than by formal rules and thatmost informal practices can be traced to the Soviet period or earlier. Insofar as these informal rules are non transparent and change frequently, they can only be understood by insiders. Thus an alternative titleof thisbook could have been 'An Insider's Account ofHow Russia Works'. The author uses sports analogy to describe Russian informal practices as a 'feel for the game, as the practical mastery of the logic or of the immanent necessity of a game ? a mastery acquired by experience 770 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 of the game' (p. 20). It is through her respondents that Ledeneva herself acquires thismastery, which she ispassing on to outsiders in her book. According to the author, informal rules exist because of the weakness of formal rules. The co-existence of formal and informal rules has profound consequences for individual behaviour. In this environment, anybody can be found guilty of violating some formal rules (which everyone at some point must disregard). Because everyone isguilty of something, punishment must be selective. Therefore, avoiding selective punishment in a setting where every one is 'guilty' is a goal ofmastering the game of contemporary Russian busi ness. Moreover, the violation of unwritten rules can lead to punishment for theviolation of formal rules.As we all know, an oligarch who disobeys unwrit ten rules about not challenging the establishment can find himself selectively prosecuted for the violation of tax laws; whereas his peers are left alone. Selective punishment where formal guilt isborne by all was also characteristic of the Soviet regime. The 'plan was the law' and everyone violated some aspect of the plan but only a few could be punished. Indeed, what Ledeneva isdescribing for contemporary Russia was just as trueof Stalin's...