The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold - Softcover

"As a result, according to "The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold", 23 of the world's 25 coldest cities with populations over 500,000 are in Russia. The maintenance of the massive Soviet misallocation of people and industrial plant constitutes an enormous tax on the Russian economy today." --Kim Iskyan, "Slate"

"This incisive polemic, however, argues that if Russians hope to attain prosperity they should abandon their eastern territories, where not a single settlement is economically viable. Of all the political pathologies to emerge from the Soviet experiment, none were so grandiose and manifestly disastrous as the attempt to fashion an industrial utopia in the Siberian wasteland." -- "The New Yorker"

"The disastrous impact of Soviet planning on the geography of the Russian economy is a hitherto neglected but vital subject. Those still wondering why market reforms have achieved only limited success in Russia since the collapse of Communism cannot afford to overlook this timely and original book." --Niall Ferguson, "Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford University"

"Many scholars have written on the influence of the cold and the problems of distance in Russia. In The Siberian Curse, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy seek to bring new rigor to the task.... Provides a new way to look at Russian reform.... Hill and Gaddy show us that Siberia's development did not make sense." --Cristina Chuen, Monterey Institute of International Studies, "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists"

"An in-depth study of the urbanization of Siberia and a thorough investigation of the economic problems created by past mistakes for contemporary Russian government." -- "Utopian Studies"

."..the author's approach to Russia's geographical features, both in historical and economic terms, is original and well researched. Although recent literature on productivity and economic growth normally treats geography as the only exogeneous variable, Hill and Gaddy argye that the allocation of human and physical capital across Russia was not an accident of nature's making." --Victoria Levin, World Bank, "Demokratizatsiya"

"This is a welcome and important contribution to the burgeoning literature on how physical geography contributes to economic development or retrogression....This book adds important new insights into the continuing debates over Russia's economic past and future." --Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University

" "The Siberian Curse" is a highly original as well as persuasive account of recurrent Russian economic problems due...Russia's current government would do well to heed the admonitions of the book's American authors." --Richard Pipes, Professor of History, Emeritus, Harvard University

"The book's conclusion about the ominous future of Siberia casts an important new perspective on Russia's geopolitical dilemmas." --Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Russia is the wrong shape. Too big, far too long, flat for much of the way and accursedly mountainous in between; but above all, as Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy show in this fascinating study, the wrong shape economically.... " -- "The Economist"