Imagined economies

by Yoshiko M. Herrera

"This book examines the economic bases of regional sovereignty movements in the Russian Federation from 1990 through 1993. Based on an original data set of Russian regional sovereignty movements, Herrera's analysis employs a variety of methods including both qualitative case studies of Sverdlovsk and Samara oblasts using systematic content analysis of local newspaper articles and quantitative statistical analysis. The central finding of the book is that variation in Russian regional activism is explained not by differences in economic conditions but by differences in the construction or imagination of economic interests; in the language of other contemporary debates, economic advantage and disadvantage are as imagined as nations."--Jacket.