The Impact of Trade on Russian Agrarian Institutions: An Introduction

Policy analysts, political economists, and practitioners in the West have long recognized and advocated the merits of liberal free trade. Promoting free trade and market economies have been key components of policies encouraged by intergovernmental financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. After Asian NICs developed and expanded their economies relatively fast in the 1970s with the adoption of policies that supported liberal free trade, other states took note. For example, the lessons of development in the Asian NICs encouraged Latin American states to change economic strategies in the 1980s. Leading economists, such as Jeffrey Sachs, confidently advised governments in various regions of the world on the policies required to shift their economies to reflect free trade and export substitution strategy. The growth of states adopting similar policies was further enhanced as the Soviet economic model of a centrally planned economy became discredited in the 1980s. Central East European states began turning toward marketization of the economy, as did the Soviet Union by the late 1980s. The trend seemed to mark the emergence of a true global free trade economy by the end of the twentieth century.