In this radical and controversial overview of the post-communist world, Boris Kagarlitsky argues that the very success of neo-liberal capitalism has made traditional socialism all the more necessary and feasible. Kagarlitsky argues that leftists exaggerate the importance of the 'objective' aspects of the 'new reality' -- globalisation -- and the weakening of the state, while underestimating the importance of the hegemony of neo-liberalism. As long as neo-liberalism retains its ideological hegemony, despite its economic failure, the consequence is a 'new barbarism' -- already a reality in...

In this book Boris Kagarlitsky offers a trenchant analysis of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the transformation of a section of the old nomenklatura into a new possessing and ruling elite. Kagarlitsky shows that Western commentators have been misled by the street theatre of events like the bungled coup of August 1991 into supposing that a fundamental break has been made with the confused politics and economics of the late Soviet period. He analyses the ill-considered and self-interested attempts made by the nomenklatura to privatize assets and inaugurate a free-market economy, finding...