Politics and Practices in Post-Soviet ‘Business’ : between shame and success
Politics and Practices in Post-Soviet ‘Business’ : between shame and success

Summary/Abstract: This article looks at the institutional and cultural roots of post-Soviet business revealing the paradoxes in which the new businessmen are caught, that of new actors using their ex-Soviet experience and connections to act in a particularly shaped “market” economy. It reveals how post-Soviet business fed from the Soviet old institutional setting and combined old resources in a new environment. For example people active in the Komsomol or the secret services were able to both enhance their wealth but adapted to the needs of “the new electoral system”. The main ethnographic example focuses on the case of an ex-Soviet businessman, who acted as an intermediary between the Western markets and the ex-Soviet political elites. He alternatively acted out a triple role, that of a western businessman, an ex-Soviet citizen and an expert, thus enabling the conversion of politics into economic gains and vice versa.

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