Review by Choice Review
The studies in this World Bank volume use qualitative methods to analyze poverty in eight former Soviet republics. Poverty is considered multidimensional, including vulnerability, social isolation, and insecurity. Contributors find that lack of reform, especially in Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia, and Moldova, inhibited growth and increased poverty, but even the other economies have experienced increasing poverty. People starting new enterprises faced considerable obstacles, including not only high rents, taxes, and fees but also bribes demanded by inspectors, customs officers, and police, and extortion from organized crime. The strongest private entrepreneurs were those who accumulated assets, acquired knowledge, and established networks in private or cooperative business during the Soviet period. Reform of collective farms was resisted by farm officials, who used their power to prevent private farmers from obtaining inputs and markets. Coping strategies for the poor included a meager diet, childlessness, moving in with relatives, selling assets, borrowing, diminished health care and education, subsistence farming, bartering, reciprocity, remittances from abroad, begging, prostitution, and theft. Women, minorities, the disabled, and pensioners were disproportionately affected. This insightful and well-written book puts a human face on poverty and slow institutional change in the former Soviet Union. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. E. W. Nafziger Kansas State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
