Few studies have attempted to examine analytically various aspects of the contract enforcement institutions in post-Soviet Russia. Researchers agree that the lack of legislation for improving the operation of the legal system, which in turn would enhance the ability of exchange, is producing severe obstacles for economic growth. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the administrative hi...

The present article aims to examine Isaiah Berlin's views and ideas, and gives answers to the questions of how political goodness is linked to the concept of negative liberty in Berlin's thought,  and how his view of political goodness has formed his critique looking toward the political system of the Soviet Union. Political goodness in Berlin's thought seems to be multiplied, and from the plur...

Although the anti-plague system of the former Soviet Union developed fully during the Soviet era, its foundations were laid long before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This article traces the evolution of the anti-plague measures from imposition of temporary quarantine in affected areas to the creation of the standard response system and the establishment of permanent anti-plague organization...

In the Soviet Union, as in many other countries, the treatment of inpatients claims the lion's share of health service expenditure. However, analysis of the activity of Soviet hospitals remains at a rudimentary level in certain major respects, one explanation for which is likely to be the comparatively low figures for cost per case and cost per bed-day. Given that little attention is devoted to...

I study how regional populations respond to local labor demand shifts by quantifying how the collapse of Finnish-Soviet trade in early 1990s affected regional working-age populations in Finland. I identify local labor demand shifts by using regional variation in the production of goods that were exported from Finland to Soviet Union. I find that the more local employment focused on the producti...

f we were to issue a report card on the state of democracy in the world today, how would the twenty or so post-Communist states rate? And, while we are at it, how well do our professional efforts to understand the new states of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact (as well as other former authoritarian states) measure up? The two sets of questions are inevitably related, for reality is alway...