Please join the Fletcher Eurasia Club for a lunch seminar with independent scholar and alumnus Daniel Satinsky on his latest book, Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes (2023). We encourage you to read his 2019 article on Russia’s changing role in the global economy and take a look at his list of supplemental readings. Click here to register for the event.

The book tells the story of American participation in the dismantling of the Soviet economy and the creation of the Russian market economy in the 1990s. It is based on more than 100 interviews with citizen diplomats, entrepreneurs, bankers, consultants, and aid program administrators active in Russia in those years. The book chronicles the real-life experiences of these Americans as they participated in building new sectors of the post-Soviet Russian economy in finance, investment, stock trading, real estate, restaurants, public relations, law, and media (television, radio, newspapers, and movies) at a time of historically unprecedented collaboration and interaction between Russians and Americans.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rise of official Russian anti-Western nationalism, it is easy to lose sight of the profound transformation of Russian life in the 1990s and the critical role of Americans in those changes that make the structure of modern Russian life fundamentally different than it was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Appreciating the extent of American and European influence on Russia in the 1990s is also fundamental to understanding the Russian nationalist backlash of today. The interview excerpts and analysis in the book are a necessary corrective to stereotypical presentations of Russia in the 1990s and argue for a more sophisticated look at Russia and its enduring role in the geopolitics, economics, and culture of our evolving world.

The Eurasia Club weekly lunch seminar series engages with students, faculty, staff, and researchers to foster a better understanding of the region among members of the Fletcher community. Members of the wider Tufts community are also welcome to attend. Lunch will be served.

Daniel Satinsky is an attorney, business consultant, and independent scholar. He first visited the USSR in 1984 and was active in business in the USSR and Russia from 1990 to 2014. He co-authored Hammer and Silicon: The Soviet Diaspora in the US Innovation Economy (2018). He is a former President of the Board of the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce of New England (1998 – 2014) and an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He completed a MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a J.D. from Northeastern University Law School.