Postcommunist Welfare States: Reform Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book is a product of years of research and study, and there are many people whose help and support I would like to acknowledge. First, I thank the social scientists in Moscow who have devoted their careers to studying Russia’s social sector and who gave generously of their expertise and time to explain a reality that was often obscured as much as revealed by documents and statistics. Much of what I have understood I owe to them. I thought it best not to identify interviewees individually, but I very much appreciate the knowledge and help of everyone who spoke with me over the course of the research, including those from the research community, and from the Russian government, the World Bank, and other organizations. Many colleagues have contributed to this work. I especially want to thank Sarah Oates, Sarah Brooks, and Judyth Twigg for their generosity in providing research materials that would otherwise have been inaccessible . I also thank the following scholars for reading and commenting on various parts of the draft: Sarah Brooks, Michael Cain, Gerald Easter, Stephan Haggard, Robert Kaufman, Conor O’Dwyer, Mitchell Orenstein, Thomas Remington, Marilyn and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Barney Schwalberg, Richard Snyder, Barbara Stallings, Janet Vaillant, Kurt Weyland, Jeanne Wilson, and two anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press. I have tried to respond to their insightful comments and critiques, which have led to many improvements in the manuscript. The final product remains my responsibility entirely. Several institutions supported the research for this book. Here I acknowledge especially my department at Brown University for providing leave time to work on the manuscript. A two-year working group on Globalization and the Welfare State, directed by Dietrich Rueschemeyer at Brown University’s Watson Institute, provided a critical source of ideas and inspiration for the project. Crucial parts of the writing were accomplished during a year as a senior scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, directed by Timothy Colton. The National Council for Eurasian and East European Studies and the International Research and Exchanges Board provided support for research time as well as numerous trips to Moscow and Washington, D.C. Parts of the research were presented at conferences or seminars at the Davis Center, the Watson Institute, the Mershon Center at Ohio State University, and the Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Several research assistants, who have since gone on to bigger and better things, provided invaluable help: Tanya Abrams, Sava Savov, Matthew Crosston, Catherine (Sam) Johnson, Andrew Matheny, Sean Yom, Anna Rasulova, and most especially Gavril Bilev, who prepared all the figures and without whose assistance I could not have finished the project. Sincere thanks go to my editor at Cornell Press, Roger Haydon, whose interest in the project from the outset greatly encouraged me, to his extraordinary assistant, Sara Ferguson, and to Teresa Jesionowski, for her abundant help in the editing process. To my colleague and friend, Elena Vinogradova, who has been my host in Moscow and aided my work in countless ways throughout, I am deeply grateful. As he has from the time we first met, my husband Dan encouraged me to “inch along” and has given his support generously in so many ways. My greatest pleasure while writing has been in seeing our son David grow from a child into a young man with great intelligence, integrity, and enthusiasm for life. Finally, the book is dedicated to my father and to the memory of my mother. L.J.C. xiv Acknowledgments Postcommunist Welfare States ...