How Russia's Bureaucracy hindered its Economic Development

Abstract

At least as far back as the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, Russia's state bureaucracy has been widely considered to be top-heavy, corrupt, inefficient and tyrannical. By the early twentieth century the real driving force of Russian history and society was neither the constitutional façade erected by the autocracy to stifle the revolution nor the subsequent Bolshevik seizure of power, but rather the growth of the state bureaucracy. Similarly, in the course of the twentieth century, analysts on both the left and the right came to view hyper-bureaucratic growth unchecked by democratic constraint as the major problem of Soviet society. Attempts to reduce bureaucratic interference in the economy of post-Soviet Russia have not resulted in positive change.