A Strong State for a Weak Market: A Structural and Functional Analysis of the Financial and Economic Bloc of the Russian Government on the Eve of Market Reforms (October–December 1991)

The study aims to identify changes in the role of the state in regulating economic processes through the lens of the structure and functions of the Russian government on the eve of radical market reform. A review of the scholarly literature revealed a lack of consensus regarding the desirability of state intervention in economic life. The historiography of the issue likewise shows that existing studies do not provide an accurate and integrated description of the structure and functions of the government’s financial and economic bloc, and therefore do not allow for a proper analysis of its activities during the period under consideration. The study is based primarily on normative and administrative documents of state authorities, as well as media materials. It is conducted within a structural-functional framework that views the government’s financial and economic bloc as an integrated mechanism, each component of which is designed to perform specific functions in order to achieve a common objective. The object of analysis was the set of government bodies directly involved in the operational management of economic processes: the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the RSFSR, the Ministry of Trade and Material Resources of the RSFSR, the Ministry of Industry of the RSFSR, the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations of the RSFSR, and the Currency and Economic Council of the RSFSR. This made it possible to identify the main factors driving the structural and functional evolution of the government’s financial and economic bloc. These included the absorption of union-level ministries and state committees, the concentration of executive levers in the hands of a narrow group of ideologically aligned specialists, and the absence of a legal and regulatory framework for subordinating the elements of the union system of state administration. The performance of these administrative bodies was accompanied by difficulties in establishing control over a large central apparatus, a shortage of financial and material-technical resources, and the restructuring of administrative mechanisms under conditions of partial economic liberalization. These factors brought to the fore the tendency toward the enlargement of government structures under the control of reformers and the concentration of regulatory functions within them. Although the government sought to reduce the role of directive methods of administration, its ability, under conditions of economic crisis, to allocate the scarcest resources predetermined the persistence of a high level of state intervention in economic processes.

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