Collision and Collusion by Janine Wedel

When the Soviet Unions communist empire collapsed in 1989, a mood of euphoria took hold in the West and in Eastern Europe. The West had won the ultimate victory--it had driven a silver stake through the heart of Communism. Its next planned step was to help the nations of Eastern Europe to reconstruct themselves as democratic, free-market states, and full partners in the First World Order. But that, as Janine Wedel reveals in this gripping volume, was before Western governments set their poorly conceived programs in motion. Collision and Collusion tells the bizarre and sometimes scandalous story of Western governments attempts to aid the former Soviet block. He shows how by mid-decade, Western aid policies had often backfired, effectively discouraging market reforms and exasperating electorates who, remarkably, had voted back in the previously despised Communists. Collision and Collusion is the first book to explain where the Western dollars intended to aid Eastern Europe went, and why they did so little to help. Taking a hard look at the bureaucrats, politicians, and consultants who worked to set up Western economic and political systems in Eastern Europe, the book details the extraordinary costs of institutional ignorance, cultural misunderstanding, and unrealistic expectations. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Wedel's (The Private Poland) experience in the Soviet bloc gives her the sociological basis from which to understand the post-Soviet aid period. While painting a sympathetic portrait of well-meaning foreign donors, such as USAID and the European Union's PHARE (Poland and Hungary Aid in Restructuring the Economy) programs, she presents the myriad elements that contributed to their failure in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, but most spectacularly in Russia and other nations of the former Soviet Union. Prominent among the culprits were the media darlings of the Marriott Brigade, consultants who jet-setted about the region, offering homilies and heady capitalist exhortations, then departed safely to the next country before developing concrete solutions. While donors lulled themselves with the idea that these consultants were effective, Easterners were quick to adopt foreign friends to get access to funding. Wedel sharply exposes the mutual promotion of the Harvard Institute for International Development's consultants and economic guru Anatoly Chubais's cronies. She charges that, gaining nearly sacrosanct status, they maneuvered enormous profits via insider deals: e.g., Harvard Management Fund was one of only two foreign participants in the fabulously lucrative loans-for-shares deals, while one Chubais cohort obtained Norilski Nickel for a fraction of its value. Wedel's research reveals how little Western aid really got to where it was supposed to go and why even much that did failed to help. Wedel's bold, invaluable report is frightening for its revelations and political implications, both in the U.S. and the ex-Eastern bloc. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Wedel (anthropology, George Washington Univ.), who has written primarily about Poland (The Private Poland, LJ 7/86), here takes a highly critical look at American and European attempts to provide assistance to the emerging democracies of the Second World of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Wedel describes carpetbagger consultants in Eastern Europe and the chicanery of the Chubais clique and the Harvard Institute for International Development in Russia, pointing to the disconnect [between East and West] forged by the Cold War and exacerbated by the barriers of language, culture, distance, information, and semiclosed borders as the root cause. She doesn't describe what these programs have accomplished; researchers will have to consult the publications and web sites of organizations such as the OECD and USAID. While Wedel takes a rather partisan tone, little literature exists on this topic, recommending this book for public and research libraries.?Michael Edward Neubert, Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review Very critical and troubling analysis of the shortcomings of Western aid policy, particularly to Russia. The implications of Wedel's critical assessment need to be seriously taken into account. -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to President Carter Even seven years after the fall of the Evil Empire, Russia has continued to supply the world with plenty of bad guys. Unreconstructed communists, neo-fascists and gangster hit men aren't difficult to come by in Moscow. It's the good guys who are hard to find. That's a lesson Washington hasn't quite learned. In her new book Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998, George Washington University anthropologist Janine Wedel argues that the Clinton administration was determined to cast Boris Yeltsin's young reformers as the good guys. This, she says, unwittingly contributed to Russia's current economic mess. The result, Wedel contends, is that American aid to Russia has proved to be a disaster from beginning to end. -- Andrew Nagorski, Newsweek December 7, 1998 [Janine Wedel] is good at conjuring up the sense of adventure and psychological complexity that ensued as West and East got to know each other up close. She carefully charts the misunderstandings and cultural collisions as Western aid-givers tried to impose their own terms of reference on societies they were usually poorly equipped to understand. Much of this discussion, while illuminating, is aimed more at policy wonks than at lay readers. -- The Wall Street Journal, Christian Caryl From the Publisher Praise for Collision and Collusion: For anyone who has participated in, or merely observed at close range, U.S. aid efforts to Eastern Europe and Russia, this important book offers many sadly familiar vignettes. But Janine Wedel goes beyond just describing our aid programs and the discrepancy between what we promised and what we did. She investigates 'how aid happens.' Hers is a cautionary tale of the conflict of means versus ends, results versus process. Above all, Collision and Collusion reminds us of the danger of trying to impose change upon societies without understanding how they really work. --Clifford G. Gaddy, The Brookings Institute Janine Wedel's Collision and Collusion offers devastating evidence showing how foreign aid breeds arrogance in donors, resentment in recipients, and waste and corruption around the globe. --James Bovard, author of Lost Rights About the Author Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. From the Publisher Praise for Collision and Collusion: For anyone who has participated in, or merely observed at close range, U.S. aid efforts to Eastern Europe and Russia, this important book offers many sadly familiar vignettes. But Janine Wedel goes beyond just describing our aid programs and the discrepancy between what we promised and what we did. She investigates 'how aid happens.' Hers is a cautionary tale of the conflict of means versus ends, results versus process. Above all, Collision and Collusion reminds us of the danger of trying to impose change upon societies without understanding how they really work. --Clifford G. Gaddy, The Brookings Institute Janine Wedel's Collision and Collusion offers devastating evidence showing how foreign aid breeds arrogance in donors, resentment in recipients, and waste and corruption around the globe. --James Bovard, author of Lost Rights About the Author Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. About the Author Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. Janine R. Wedel is an associate research professor and a research fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs at George Washington University. From The Washington Post Wedel's probing look at cross-cultural miscommunication demonstrates that Western resolve and the global rush to benefit from the demise of communist rule was costly not only to societies resistant to change, but to the American taxpayer as well.