Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Open for Business: Russia's Return to the Global Economy

Open for Business: Russia's Return to the Global Economy

Ed A. Hewett with Clifford G. Gaddy
Reviewed by By William Diebold, Jr.
Spring 1993
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Ed A. Hewett with Clifford G. Gaddy
Brookings
1992
164 pp.
$0.00

Ed Hewett, recently deceased, had a remarkable command of facts about the Soviet economy and a penetrating understanding of how it worked. These qualities, and his ability to explain complex matters briefly and clearly, are beautifully demonstrated in this excellent book examining the Gorbachev reforms and their breakdown. The book, which gives special attention to the external economic relations of the U.S.S.R. (and later, Russia), was revised and updated by Gaddy, of the Brookings Institution, after Hewett joined the staff of the National Security Council.

Related

Essay, Sep/Oct 2001
Caspian Energy At The Crossroads
Jan H. Kalicki

The Caspian basin holds enormous oil and gas deposits that could play a critical role in the world's economic future. But getting them out of the ground and onto the market requires overcoming formidable political and geographic problems. For its own sake as well as the region's, Washington should do whatever is necessary to ensure the emergence of secure and independent routes for Caspian energy to reach the outside world.

Read
Essay, Spring 1989
Trading with the Communists
Adlai E. Stevenson and Alton Frye

US policy to isolate the USSR from the world economy (such as the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, the grain embargo, and the attempt to impede the Soviet-European gas pipeline) ought now to be discontinued, so that (1) Western businesses can discover the new Soviet market (2) an economic wedge can be inserted to prevent backsliding in Soviet political and economic reform.

Read
Essay, May/Jun 1996
Ukraine: Europe’s Linchpin: Preserving Independence
John Edwin Mroz and Oleksandr Pavliuk

Ukraine has yet to solve the challenge of life after communism. Hyperinflation is just a memory and democracy is well entrenched, but production is declining, state industries remain unsold, and investors have largely stayed away. With nationalists ascendant in Russia, Ukraine needs Western money and diplomatic backing to preserve its independence and keep reform on track. A free, democratic Ukraine can serve as a model for Russia, prevent a new Soviet Union, and promote stability among its neighbors. A civil war between its Russified east and its more Ukrainian west, or its absorption into a new Russian empire, would reverberate throughout Europe.

Read