Janine Wedel - Shadow Elite - How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

21. The authors of The Unplanned Society (Wedel, ed.), a collection of articles by Polish sociologists, writers, and journalists, illustrate the first point of this paragraph. The volume provides a counterweight to many of the assumptions of Western Sovietology, an understanding built considerably on the study of formal institutions such as communist parties, the defense establishment, and central planning—institutions that disappeared with the demise of communist regimes. Without an understanding of the role of informal institutions such as social networks, many scholars found themselves without ready tools for analyzing change. By contrast, the study of informal institutions, either by insiders or outsiders, became evermore relevant. One logic at work was the “virtual economy.” See Clifford G. Gaddy and Barry W. Ickes, Russia’s Virtual Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002).

22. In theory, two types of outcomes are possible: Informal systems can support the development of new institutions and reforms, or they can thwart them. Both outcomes burgeoned in different contexts and moments of postcommunism.

On network capital, see Endre Sik and Barry Wellman, “Network Capital in Capitalist, Communist, and Post-Communist Countries,” Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary Communities , Barry Wellman, ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 225–254.

23. Sociologist Vadim Volkov, for example, has written that: “Russia . . . was close to the state of nature, where anarchy rather than hierarchy prevails. Such a diagnosis . . . is empirically correct . . . at least until the very end of the 1990s. The image of the state as one private protection company among others does more justice to the reality in question than a view of the state as the source of public power.” Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 26.

24. Hilary Appel shows how privatization was, above all, an ideologically driven process. See Hillary Appel, A New Capitalist Order: Privatization and Ideology in Russia and Eastern Europe (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2004).

With regard to organized crime in Russia, see, for example, Louise I. Shelley, “Privatization and Crime: The Post-Soviet Experience,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 11 (1995), pp. 244–256; and Svetlana P. Glinkina, “Privatizatsiya and Kriminalizatsiya: How Organized Crime Is Hijacking Privatization,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 2 (1994), pp. 385–391.

25. David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt coined the term “restructuring networks.” David Stark, “Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 4 (1996), pp. 993–1027, and David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 142–153.

Katherine Verdery coined the term “unruly coalitions.” Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 193–194.

26. Author’s interview with Leonid Kosals, November 16, 2007. See also Leonid Kosals, “Essay on Clan Capitalism in Russia,” Acta Oeconomica 57, no. 1 (2007), pp. 67–85, and “Interim Outcome of the Russian Transition: Clan Capitalism,” Discussion Paper No. 610 (Kyoto, Japan: Kyoto Institute of Economic Research, January 2006), pp. 1–36.

27. In Ukraine, the struggle over economic resources spurred “dynamic competition” among regional clans and crystallized the clan system by 1996, according to Oleg Soskin, director of the Kiev-based Institute of Society Transformation (author’s interview with Soskin, July 9, 1999). Soskin discusses “regional clans as the major factor of the state-monopoly pattern” (“What Socio-economic Model Does Ukraine Choose? On a Difficult Way to the Status of the Central European Country,” unpublished paper by Soskin, July 1999) and maintains that “clans determine most of the money flow in Ukraine” (author’s interview with Soskin). On the links of clans to political power, see Oleksandr Turchynov, “The Shadow Economy and Shadow Politics,” Political Thought: Ukrainian Political Science Journal 3, no. 4 (1996), pp. 75–86; and author’s interview with Turchynov (July 9, 1999). On competition among clans for power, see Oleg Soskin, “Political System and Institutional Changes in Ukraine: Interrelation and Dependence,” unpublished paper by Soskin, July 1999. On how clans shape Ukraine’s political economy, see the work of Roman Kupchinsky, coordinator of corruption studies, RFE/RL.

28. Author’s interview with Joanna Kurczewska, June 22, 2008, and Antoni Z. Kamiński and Joanna Kurczewska, “Institutional Nomads Fifteen Years Later,” forthcoming article.

29. The Kryshtanovskaya quote is from Olga Kryshtanovskaya, “The Real Masters of Russia,” RIA Novosti Argumenty I Fakty , no. 21 (May 1997), reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List , http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/default.cfm. See also Olga Kryshtanovskaya, “Illegal Structures in Russia,” Sociological Research: A Journal of Translations from Russian (July-August 1996), pp. 60–80; Olga Kryshtanovskaya, “Illegal Structures in Russia,” Trends in Organized Crime 3, no. 1 (Fall 1997), pp. 14–17; and Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, “From Soviet Nomenklatura to Russian Elite,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 5 (1996), pp. 711–733.

30. Olga Kryshtanovskaya is cited in Andrew E. Kramer, “The Kremlin Flexes, and a Tycoon Reels,” New York Times , July 8, 2007, Business Section, p. 1. The quote from the 1990s is from Virginie Coulloudon, “Elite Groups,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 6, no. 3 (1998), p. 545. The journalist here cited is Brian Whitmore, “Might Makes Right,” Transitions Online , October 2, 2000, reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List #4555, October 3, 2000.

31. Author’s interview with Kurczewska; and Kamiński and Kurczewska, “Institutional Nomads Fifteen Years Later.”

32. Sources on the statement that Ordynacka counted among its ranks professionals placed in the most important political and economic structures, including banks, political parties, and the media, include: author’s interview with Kurczewska, and Kamiński and Kurczewska, “Institutional Nomads Fifteen Years Later.”

33. For the market position of Polish Television, see Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy and Independence 2 (New York: Open Society Institute, 2005), http://www.soros.org/initiatives/media/articles_publications/publications/eurotv_20051011/voltwo_20051011.pdf, p. 1082.

34. Information on Ordynacki was gleaned in part through author’s interview with Kurczewska, and Kamiński and Kurczewska, “Institutional Nomads Fifteen Years Later.”

35. While the final session of the parliamentary commission was held in April 2004 and the last hearing was conducted in November 2003, various prosecutorial investigations continued for several years. The last, conducted by the prosecutor’s office in Białystok, was dismissed in January 2008.

For astute analyses of Rywingate, see: Jan Skórzyński, ed., System Rywina: Czyli Druga Strona III Rzeczypospolitej , Warsaw: Presspublica, 2003.

36. Observations of Barbara Pomorska recorded in unpublished document sent to Janine Wedel, September 7, 2005.

37. Michnik initiated an investigation by his own paper, ostensibly to try to establish the facts. The article that appeared almost six months later, however, failed to shed new light on the story but instead raised suspicions as to the newspaper’s true role in it. It was shortly thereafter that the parliament established a special commission to look into the matter.