Missing the China Exit: A World-systems Perspective on the Ukrainian State

Georgi Derluguian helps explain why Ukraine wound up with this oligarch problem in the first place, identifying the cause as a Ukraine’s peripheral position in the world economy and the failure of its elites to cooperate for a larger good during the critical moment of the USSR’s collapse. Here a comparison with China proves useful. Derluguian argues that China succeeded because its relatively simple state allowed its leaders to work together to orient the country toward the needs of the global economy, while the complexity of Soviet institutions (including its division into multiple federal units) made such cooperation much more challenging. After the USSR collapsed, various “violent entrepreneurs” were able to take advantage of the resulting chaos to their own advantage, becoming oligarchs or state-based predators that have vested individual interests in subverting reforms.