Transforming Russia: From a Military to a Peace Economy by Tarja s> Cronberg (review)

Abstract

392 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 privatization.Even the recent returnof BP to the Russianoil industryscene in co-partnershipwith TNK, having previouslyhad its fingersseverely burned, is merely the exception that proves the rule. The current 'buoyancy' in the Russian economy is fuelled by oil. Taking the longer view, BP knows that the eventualprize of accessto substantialRussianoil reservesjustifiesthe financial risksof doing business in Russia. Talk by BP of improving the governance of Russian business by its new adventure is therefore absurd. While the first Russiancompanymay have achievedlistingon theNew YorkStockExchange, satisfyingUS accounting standards,informed observers speak optimistically of fifty years before the deeply criminalized character of Russian business undergoes significant change. At the very least, the ongoing dilemma for Westerninvestorsis routine complicity. All this makes the current, if temporary, 'war on the oligarchs' difficultto comprehend. Yetin a sense, it is almostirrelevantto the prospectsforcleaning out Russian business crime. Putin's 'amnesty' suggests the results of the privatization grab of the I990S are unlikely to be reversed, even if there is some symbolic cutting down to size for electoral or other reasons. Contrite oligarchs may publicly apologize for previous excesses, but criminality has comprehensivelypenetrated Russian business. While the IMF may threaten, and the EU may huffand puffabout the need for good corporategovernance, Russiatoday revealsthe truecriminogenicface of a capitalismwhich no codes of conduct can alter, and nojudiciary can match. Sattershows us that face in floridand forensicdetail. Faculty ofSocialSciences CHARLES WOOLFSON University ofGlasgow Cronberg, Tarja. Transforming Russia:Froma Militagytoa PeaceEconomy. I. B. Tauris, London and New York,2003. iX+ 209 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Appendix. ?45.00? BASED largely on a series of interviewsthroughout the I990S with employees of military-industrialenterprisesand associatedR&D institutionsin the Perm region of the Urals, the author provides some interesting details and interpretationsof the failureof conversion and transformationof the Soviet/ Russian military-industrialcomplex (MIC) to a civilian, commercial footing. Tarja Cronberg, a Danish sociologist of technology and a self-proclaimed feminist, expresses a good deal of sympathy for the plight of the personnel (especially the women) affected by what she considers an ill-conceived and insensitiveWestern-inspiredcampaign to restructurethe Russian MIC along free-market, commercial lines. As she points out, these people - the engineers, scientists,technicians, managersand auxiliaryservicepersonnelhad been the elite of Soviet 'forces of production'. The social, material, and psychological aura of the 'closed' enterprisesin which they worked endowed them with respect, materialprivileges and a sense of patriotic defence of the socialist motherland against the capitalist-imperialistenemy. They were the elite segment of what was essentiallya dualisticsociety:the MIC and the rest; REVIEWS 393 and they received farmore than one-half of the resourcesof the overallsociety to carryon theirwork. The effects of the post-Cold War dismantling of this 'social world' (her term)of the MIC were much more devastating,sociallyand morally,than for analogous employees of, say, Lockheed, Boeing or Raytheon in the USA, for whom defence work was just another job and expectations of stable, longterm employment were non-existent. Cronbergmakesthe valid point that the state could have played a much more prominent role in orchestrating the conversion process, since the elements of the MIC were accustomed to following state operational and organizational instructions. The pressure to 'de-statify' the economy and dismantle the centralized core of the MIC, however, militated against a continuing state-dominated role in the process. In this reviewer's opinion, Cronberg somewhat exaggerates the impact of these changes and identifies too closely with the victims of the process. She largely ignores the seamier side of the Soviet system and the insidious role of the KGB in the running of the enterprises (through the so-called 'first department', or personnel section, in each unit and sub-unit). Nevertheless, she does provide some usefulinformationon how the MIC was structuredand how it operated. For example, in Perm, there were no enterprises which produced a finished military product. Rather, they supplied high-tech components aircraft and rocket motors, artillery systems and composite materials for assembly or application elsewhere. This made conversion to civilianproduction especiallydifficult. A more serious problem with her narrative, however, are the sporadic, contrived excursionsinto recent social science theory to situateher discourse. The use of a 'social constructivist' approach and the concept of 'social negotiation' of technology and even...