Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions by Stephen Lee SolnickReview by: Robert LegvoldForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1999), p. 152Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049246 .

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Recent Books

Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in

Soviet Institutions, by Stephen lee

solnick. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1998,320 pp. $49.95. A rigorous account of how the Soviet

system fell apart. Using three different Soviet youth organizations as

examples? the Komsomol, military conscription, and the job assignment program?Solnick illustrates how Mikhail Gorbachev's

reforms rechanneled the self-seeking behavior of bureaucrats in directions

that destroyed rather than revived Soviet

institutions. He bases his compact and

accessible explanation on recent general

institutional theory. Seen from this angle, structures collapsed not because ideology

failed, politicians quarreled, or interest

groups rose to challenge sterile authority.

Instead, the system imploded because

bureaucrats at all levels made off with

state assets at the first opportunity,

hollowing out the state or "stealing" it.

The theorizing may not be the average reader's cup of tea, but the underlying

argument will fascinate most.

After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as

a Great Power, by dimitri k. simes.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, 288 pp. $25.00.

In this blend of memoir and essay, Simes, the director of the Nixon Center, reflects

on the process that brought the Soviet

Union down and the new Russia to its

present battered state. His are strong

opinions: on Nixon, favorable; on the

Clinton administration's foreign policy,

unfavorable; on Gorbachev, positive but

qualified; and on Yeltsin, less positive but nuanced. Partly through his association

with Nixon and partly on his own, Simes

knows most of the key Russian figures in

the story and many of the Americans,

giving an added dimension to his ac

count. This makes for interesting reading, but the book's most impressive portions come from the insights into Russia's

plight and the challenges ahead?insights of one raised in Russia and well connected

to its elite but no less well attuned to the

United States, his adopted country.

Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in

Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in

thei?JOS. BY SHEILA FITZPATRICK.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 280 pp. $30.00.

One of the most influential historians of

the Soviet period describes what it was like to live under Stalin in the 1930s?the fran

tic, heroic, tragic decade of collectiviza

tion, forced-draft industrialization, and

purges, when ordinary Russians struggled to find a wearable pair of shoes and lined

up in subzero weather at two o'clock in the

morning in the hope of getting 16 grams of

bread. Also in Fitzpatrick's portrait are

workers harassed to emulate hero laborers, abandoned wives, neglected children, and

the homeless?as well as the newly privi

leged and, at the other end, the families of

political outcasts. They were years of

unimaginable hardship and brutality but also of idealism, a surreal melange that she

captures with admirable matter-of-fact

ness. The residue of attitude and habit

formed during these searing years survives

to a surprising degree in our own day.

Kapitalizm: Russia's Struggle to Free Its

Economy, by rose brady. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1999,

320 pp. $30.00. Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of

Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989-1998.

[152] FOREIGN AFFAIRS

- Volume78No.2

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