The Satinsky Archive
The Oral History of Americans and other foreigners who participated in the historic dismantling of the Soviet economy by Russian reformers and who contributed to the creation of the Russian market economy in the 1990s.
The Satinsky Archive
The Oral History of Americans and other foreigners who participated in the historic dismantling of the Soviet economy by Russian reformers and who contributed to the creation of the Russian market economy in the 1990s.
About
About
The Satinsky Archive is an oral history of the impact of Americans and other non-Russian foreigners on modern Russia as it emerged from the Soviet Union. Understanding current Russia depends on understanding where it came from not only its Soviet and pre-Soviet historical roots, but the formation of the social forces that created new economic and political structures beginning in the 1980s and developing into the 2000s. The interviews collected here give a firsthand, on the ground account of this period as an historical resource and as a collection of insights into the impact of Western market capitalism as it was adopted in post-Soviet Russia.
The Archive is an outgrowth of the extensive interviews conducted for the book, Creating the Post-Soviet Market Economy: Through American Eyes. Of the 105 interviews conducted for the book, there was only space to include excerpts from 65. Even with these limits, the book is an important contribution to the study of Russia and US Russia relations standing on its own. The core of the Archive expands upon the book as compilation of a number of the original interviews, only slightly edited but presented in full, along with more recent interviews with similarly important figures from those times.
The objective of The Satinsky Archive is to preserve the history of interaction and transformation created by entrepreneurs, business professionals, multinational companies and government aid programs as it was experienced on the ground.
Structure of the Archive
The interviews have been organized by major themes -- Citizen diplomacy in the 1980s, Western Impact on the Transition to the Russian Market Economy, Establishing Private Business and Reform of Soviet Industry, Western Cultural and Social Impact: Russia’s Culture Wars. They can also be accessed through a listing in alphabetical order. Each individual interview includes a brief biography of the person’s career in the Soviet Union or Russia, a video of the interview, and a transcript of the interview.
Significance of the Archive
The interviews in The Satinsky Archive are intended to challenge commonly held assumptions about Russia and to provide deep background on its evolution in the late Soviet Period and then up through the formative years of the 1990s and 2000s. It also includes extensive interviews with citizen diplomats from the 1980s, a largely ignored period of extensive non-governmental citizen diplomacy activities that helped set the stage for what was to come with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Russia emerged from the Soviet Union with the Yeltsin-era reforms that were consistent with the neoliberal economic model of the 1990s. Russia followed an historical pattern of borrowing technology and business models from the West begun by Peter the Great and followed to a certain extent by Stalin in the 1930s.
Russians rapidly assimilated the skills and structures of a market economy. Then, starting around the time of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, many Russians began questioning the wisdom of accepting the America and the Western version of the market economy and social values being introduced along with it. Around this same time, key traditional sources of power in Russia, the security services and the military, which had been disoriented and weakened in the Yeltsin years regrouped to support Vladimir Putin as the successor to Boris Yeltsin.
With the rise in oil prices, Putin’s consolidation of the Russian state, and the taming of the Yeltsin era oligarchs, Russia began to reject foreign political, economic, and social values, increasingly asserting the power of the Russian state over the private sector. The beginnings of this process are contained within these interviews. The people interviewed lived through this evolution of post-Soviet Russia, as witnesses and participants, with important and unique observations, insights, and analysis from this direct, on-the-ground experience.
The importance of this firsthand experience and of the deep understanding of Russia and of Russians that came from it is magnified by the almost complete separation of Americans and Russians after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaving us with only indirect methods of studying the dynamics of this critically important country.
As The Russia Program and others develop new means of analysis, history as contained within The Satinsky Archive will play an important role.
The Archive is an outgrowth of the extensive interviews conducted for the book, Creating the Post-Soviet Market Economy: Through American Eyes. Of the 105 interviews conducted for the book, there was only space to include excerpts from 65. Even with these limits, the book is an important contribution to the study of Russia and US Russia relations standing on its own. The core of the Archive expands upon the book as compilation of a number of the original interviews, only slightly edited but presented in full, along with more recent interviews with similarly important figures from those times.
The objective of The Satinsky Archive is to preserve the history of interaction and transformation created by entrepreneurs, business professionals, multinational companies and government aid programs as it was experienced on the ground.
Structure of the Archive
The interviews have been organized by major themes -- Citizen diplomacy in the 1980s, Western Impact on the Transition to the Russian Market Economy, Establishing Private Business and Reform of Soviet Industry, Western Cultural and Social Impact: Russia’s Culture Wars. They can also be accessed through a listing in alphabetical order. Each individual interview includes a brief biography of the person’s career in the Soviet Union or Russia, a video of the interview, and a transcript of the interview.
Significance of the Archive
The interviews in The Satinsky Archive are intended to challenge commonly held assumptions about Russia and to provide deep background on its evolution in the late Soviet Period and then up through the formative years of the 1990s and 2000s. It also includes extensive interviews with citizen diplomats from the 1980s, a largely ignored period of extensive non-governmental citizen diplomacy activities that helped set the stage for what was to come with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Russia emerged from the Soviet Union with the Yeltsin-era reforms that were consistent with the neoliberal economic model of the 1990s. Russia followed an historical pattern of borrowing technology and business models from the West begun by Peter the Great and followed to a certain extent by Stalin in the 1930s.
Russians rapidly assimilated the skills and structures of a market economy. Then, starting around the time of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, many Russians began questioning the wisdom of accepting the America and the Western version of the market economy and social values being introduced along with it. Around this same time, key traditional sources of power in Russia, the security services and the military, which had been disoriented and weakened in the Yeltsin years regrouped to support Vladimir Putin as the successor to Boris Yeltsin.
With the rise in oil prices, Putin’s consolidation of the Russian state, and the taming of the Yeltsin era oligarchs, Russia began to reject foreign political, economic, and social values, increasingly asserting the power of the Russian state over the private sector. The beginnings of this process are contained within these interviews. The people interviewed lived through this evolution of post-Soviet Russia, as witnesses and participants, with important and unique observations, insights, and analysis from this direct, on-the-ground experience.
The importance of this firsthand experience and of the deep understanding of Russia and of Russians that came from it is magnified by the almost complete separation of Americans and Russians after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaving us with only indirect methods of studying the dynamics of this critically important country.
As The Russia Program and others develop new means of analysis, history as contained within The Satinsky Archive will play an important role.
The Satinsky Archive is an oral history of the impact of Americans and other non-Russian foreigners on modern Russia as it emerged from the Soviet Union. Understanding current Russia depends on understanding where it came from not only its Soviet and pre-Soviet historical roots, but the formation of the social forces that created new economic and political structures beginning in the 1980s and developing into the 2000s. The interviews collected here give a firsthand, on the ground account of this period as an historical resource and as a collection of insights into the impact of Western market capitalism as it was adopted in post-Soviet Russia.
The Archive is an outgrowth of the extensive interviews conducted for the book, Creating the Post-Soviet Market Economy: Through American Eyes. Of the 105 interviews conducted for the book, there was only space to include excerpts from 65. Even with these limits, the book is an important contribution to the study of Russia and US Russia relations standing on its own. The core of the Archive expands upon the book as compilation of a number of the original interviews, only slightly edited but presented in full, along with more recent interviews with similarly important figures from those times.
The objective of The Satinsky Archive is to preserve the history of interaction and transformation created by entrepreneurs, business professionals, multinational companies and government aid programs as it was experienced on the ground.
Structure of the Archive
The interviews have been organized by major themes -- Citizen diplomacy in the 1980s, Western Impact on the Transition to the Russian Market Economy, Establishing Private Business and Reform of Soviet Industry, Western Cultural and Social Impact: Russia’s Culture Wars. They can also be accessed through a listing in alphabetical order. Each individual interview includes a brief biography of the person’s career in the Soviet Union or Russia, a video of the interview, and a transcript of the interview.
Significance of the Archive
The interviews in The Satinsky Archive are intended to challenge commonly held assumptions about Russia and to provide deep background on its evolution in the late Soviet Period and then up through the formative years of the 1990s and 2000s. It also includes extensive interviews with citizen diplomats from the 1980s, a largely ignored period of extensive non-governmental citizen diplomacy activities that helped set the stage for what was to come with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Russia emerged from the Soviet Union with the Yeltsin-era reforms that were consistent with the neoliberal economic model of the 1990s. Russia followed an historical pattern of borrowing technology and business models from the West begun by Peter the Great and followed to a certain extent by Stalin in the 1930s.
Russians rapidly assimilated the skills and structures of a market economy. Then, starting around the time of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, many Russians began questioning the wisdom of accepting the America and the Western version of the market economy and social values being introduced along with it. Around this same time, key traditional sources of power in Russia, the security services and the military, which had been disoriented and weakened in the Yeltsin years regrouped to support Vladimir Putin as the successor to Boris Yeltsin.
With the rise in oil prices, Putin’s consolidation of the Russian state, and the taming of the Yeltsin era oligarchs, Russia began to reject foreign political, economic, and social values, increasingly asserting the power of the Russian state over the private sector. The beginnings of this process are contained within these interviews. The people interviewed lived through this evolution of post-Soviet Russia, as witnesses and participants, with important and unique observations, insights, and analysis from this direct, on-the-ground experience.
The importance of this firsthand experience and of the deep understanding of Russia and of Russians that came from it is magnified by the almost complete separation of Americans and Russians after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaving us with only indirect methods of studying the dynamics of this critically important country.
As The Russia Program and others develop new means of analysis, history as contained within The Satinsky Archive will play an important role.
The Archive is an outgrowth of the extensive interviews conducted for the book, Creating the Post-Soviet Market Economy: Through American Eyes. Of the 105 interviews conducted for the book, there was only space to include excerpts from 65. Even with these limits, the book is an important contribution to the study of Russia and US Russia relations standing on its own. The core of the Archive expands upon the book as compilation of a number of the original interviews, only slightly edited but presented in full, along with more recent interviews with similarly important figures from those times.
The objective of The Satinsky Archive is to preserve the history of interaction and transformation created by entrepreneurs, business professionals, multinational companies and government aid programs as it was experienced on the ground.
Structure of the Archive
The interviews have been organized by major themes -- Citizen diplomacy in the 1980s, Western Impact on the Transition to the Russian Market Economy, Establishing Private Business and Reform of Soviet Industry, Western Cultural and Social Impact: Russia’s Culture Wars. They can also be accessed through a listing in alphabetical order. Each individual interview includes a brief biography of the person’s career in the Soviet Union or Russia, a video of the interview, and a transcript of the interview.
Significance of the Archive
The interviews in The Satinsky Archive are intended to challenge commonly held assumptions about Russia and to provide deep background on its evolution in the late Soviet Period and then up through the formative years of the 1990s and 2000s. It also includes extensive interviews with citizen diplomats from the 1980s, a largely ignored period of extensive non-governmental citizen diplomacy activities that helped set the stage for what was to come with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Russia emerged from the Soviet Union with the Yeltsin-era reforms that were consistent with the neoliberal economic model of the 1990s. Russia followed an historical pattern of borrowing technology and business models from the West begun by Peter the Great and followed to a certain extent by Stalin in the 1930s.
Russians rapidly assimilated the skills and structures of a market economy. Then, starting around the time of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, many Russians began questioning the wisdom of accepting the America and the Western version of the market economy and social values being introduced along with it. Around this same time, key traditional sources of power in Russia, the security services and the military, which had been disoriented and weakened in the Yeltsin years regrouped to support Vladimir Putin as the successor to Boris Yeltsin.
With the rise in oil prices, Putin’s consolidation of the Russian state, and the taming of the Yeltsin era oligarchs, Russia began to reject foreign political, economic, and social values, increasingly asserting the power of the Russian state over the private sector. The beginnings of this process are contained within these interviews. The people interviewed lived through this evolution of post-Soviet Russia, as witnesses and participants, with important and unique observations, insights, and analysis from this direct, on-the-ground experience.
The importance of this firsthand experience and of the deep understanding of Russia and of Russians that came from it is magnified by the almost complete separation of Americans and Russians after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaving us with only indirect methods of studying the dynamics of this critically important country.
As The Russia Program and others develop new means of analysis, history as contained within The Satinsky Archive will play an important role.
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