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Introduction: the dilemmas of peripheral liberalism; 1. Crisis: economic expertise and politics in a stagnating Soviet Union, 1972-1985; 2. Catastrophe: economic debate, generational divide, and failed reform during perestroika, 1985-1991; 3. Hubris: liberals in power, and the limits to liberal power, in the new Russia, 1991-2000; 4. Diabolus ex machina: Russian liberals and the rise of authoritarian state capitalism, 2000-2022; Conclusion: the failure of Russian peripheral liberalism; Bibliography.

In this path-breaking history, Tobias Rupprecht offers a revisionist account of Russia's post-Soviet marketisation from the perspective of the advisors and ministers who oversaw this transformation. Based on extensive interviews with economists and research in state and private archives, he uncovers a significant minority of economic liberals from late Soviet academic and dissident circles who sought to chart a new path, believing free prices and private property were the foundations of a 'civilised country'. This provides a vital challenge to the dominant narrative that neoliberal advisors and organisations imposed harmful reforms on Russia after the collapse of Communism. Liberal reformers faced a profound dilemma - one for which Western advisors had no solution either: should they commit to democratic political activism and risk irrelevance, or align themselves with those in power and be co-opted by an authoritarian state determined to reassert its imperial strength?