The Model of Tatarstan

The Republic of Tatarstan, the ancient Muslim country located in the heartland of the Russian Federation, has been travelling the same unknown path in the minefield of post-Communist market transition as the rest of the former Soviet Union. Yet Tatarstan, under the leadership of its democratically elected President Mintimer Shaimiev, soon saw its direction much more clearly than others. Its model of democratic transition, internationally recognised as the Model of Tatarstan, appears with increasing certainty to be the only right one under the conditions resulting from the collapse of the USSR. This book explains the democratic and social market-oriented reforms in Tatarstan as well as the prudent pragmatism of President Shaimiev. His vision and practice of market reform, which helped his country to avoid the worst excesses of nationalism and repeat the fate of Chechnya, also help it to ease the grip of the present Russian economic and financial crisis.