Russia’s Economy, 1998-2008: From the Abyss to Boom to Crisis Part I: Let’s Start With the Default In February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many Western analysts predicted that sanctions would bring the Russian economy to its knees within months. That didn’t happen. Russia’s economic resilience since 2022 has repeatedly caught observers off guard - and the reasons go back much further than 2022. They lie in the decade during which Russia went from total economic collapse to one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. But before we get to that recovery, we need to go back to the dark 1990s, where the whole story begins. The Collapse of the 1990s After the Soviet collapse, Russia underwent an economic transformation now widely known as “shock therapy” - an attempt to convert a planned economy into a market one almost overnight. This meant rapid price liberalization, opening up foreign trade, and mass privatization. It wasn’t a ...
