How Russia’s ‘Sistema’ Leads To The ‘Modernization Trap’

.... In a conversation I had with Ledeneva she agreed that, to a significant extent, the behavioral patterns she describes were already formed under the Soviet regime, and that the sistema as it exists today is a direct legacy of the Soviet sistema. Georgi Arbatov's book which,like hers, is also entitled The System (Человек Системы), complements her argument. Ledeneva's informal networks closely resemble those Arbatov describes. Mainstream Western specialists on the ...