Political Conditionalities: The IMF in Russia in the 1990s

The prevailing narrative holds that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed ‘shock therapy’ on Russia during the 1990s. Drawing on evidence from the IMF archives and interviews with key participants, I argue in this article that Russian economists and policymakers, and even more so the conditions of state collapse, shaped the country's post-socialist transition. Foreign assistance was occasionally used as an instrument by Russian market reformers to gain leverage in domestic policy struggles, and the IMF economists in Moscow provided technical knowledge on the workings of a market economy. Regarding the general nature of Russia's rugged transition to capitalism, however, the IMF's influence was minimal. Its demands for fiscal and monetary reform were frequently ignored or only partially implemented. By the mid-decade, the Fund tolerated non-compliance, fearing that greater pressure might politically weaken a Western-friendly government. The article thus reframes Russia's transformation as a process driven primarily by domestic developments and actors, with the IMF serving as a resource for domestic actors rather than an enforcer of an externally imposed agenda.