| Business and Politics in the Russian Regions |
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Robert W. Orttung Abstract Although generally less visible politically since Vladimir Putin became president in the beginning of 2000, Russia's oligarchs continue to exert an extensive influence over Russia's political and economic life. These powerful businessmen now control a greater share of the Russian economy than they did during the Yeltsin era. Rather than simply focusing on grabbing assets from the state and making enormous profits from Russia's export-oriented industries, however, they are starting to play a major role in center-periphery relations and the development of regional politics. In fact, big business has done much more to change the way that the governors operate than any of Putin's institutional reforms. |



National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) is a non-profit organization created in 1978 to develop and sustain long-term, high-quality programs for post-doctoral research on the social, political, economic, environmental, and historical development of Eurasia and Central and Eastern Europe. More
Aesthetic Politics in St. Petersburg: Skyline at the Heart of Political Opposition
Alexei Yurchak, University of California, Berkeley
This working paper focuses on the plans to construct a skyscraper in St Petersburg, Russia, known originally as Gazprom-City and recently renamed into Okhta Center, and on the controversy that developed around these plans. The paper uses the skyscraper debates as a lens to discuss a particular "aesthetic politics" of St Petersburg, the meaning of "world cities" and "global architecture" in Russian and international contexts, post-Soviet forms of political and corporate governance, the mobilization of civic opposition to such projects and the ability of such urban protests to translate into a more unified and politically oriented opposition than has been possible in other contexts in Russia.