Using six original surveys, this work challenges conventional understandings of Russia's politics and economics through an analysis of property battles.

Timothy Frye is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University and the former Director of The Harriman Institute. Professor Frye received a B.A. in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College in 1986, an M.I.A. from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in 1992, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1997. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Market Institutions in Russia (2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and Building States and Markets after Communism: The Perils of Polarized Democracy (Cambridge, 2010). He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the US Agency for International Development. He is also Director of the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

1. Introduction; 2. Power and property; 3. Autocratic elections and property rights; 4. Courts and connections; 5. Reputation and the rule of law; 6. Social norms and the banker's gold watch; 7. Conclusion.