Beware of How you Walk on a Rocky Path

The article analyzes differences in the outcome of similar reforms undertaken by the USSR and China in the 1980-1990s. Whereas in the Soviet Union they led to the country’s collapse, China managed to overcome an acute political crisis in 1989 and achieve rapid economic growth. The authors analyze the different initial conditions of the reforms, which predetermined their nature and focus and produced different intermediate results. Center-region relations are identified as the key factor responsible for the different outcomes of the reforms. The authors conclude that the evolution from decentralization to recentralization, which China had undergone but which had only started in the Soviet Union, continued in post-Soviet Russia, producing the same result: recentralization was actually carried out at the beginning of the 21st century when Vladimir Putin came to power.