Intercultural travel of an academic field: Adaptation of western economics by Russian universities

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened the former Soviet republics to unimpeded travel of ideas and practices from the West. Among Western innovations that were imported in Russia at that time was the academic field of economics. Until then Russian university curricula had been dominated by Marxist political economy and characterized by the rejection of Western economic theories as false science. The adoption and adaptation of economics by Russian universities caused numerous organizational, ideological, and epistemological debates inside and outside academia. This dissertation explores various aspects of intercultural translation of economics in the Russian context based on three case studies of Russian universities and a rhetorical analysis of interviews with faculty, administrators, and graduates of these institutions.