A Case Study Of Russia's Economic Transition

The process of Russia's transition from a planned economy to a market economy has lasted for more than 20 years and is still not finished.(1)In the past,the academic research on the economic transition of Russia mainly focused on the macro view,and few works specifically discussed the institutional change of a single enterprise in the context of the transition.Considering that energy is Russia's pillar industries,and that energy companies through institutional change has certain typical characteristics,the paper selects one of the most important enterprise in the Russian energy sector--Gazprom as the study object,trying to discuss the history,current situation,problems and prospects of Russian economic transition from a micro perspective.Gazprom was founded soon after Russia declared independence,but its predecessor can be traced back to the Soviet period,and the company has a lot to do with the integral development of the country's gas industry.Therefore,in this paper the research of the company's history starts from the Soviet time.Familiar with other heavy industry departments,the gas industry was managed in the form of government administration,with the establishment of the Ministry of Gas Industry.However,before the collapse of the Soviet union,a konzern enterprise was restructured on the basis of the government ministry,which serves the key factors why Gazprom was able to inherit most Soviet gas industrial assets.After Russia's independence,Gazprom's assets avoided being broken up in the context of high-level government protection and being classified into the natural monopoly industries.In the process of privatization,the company underwent shareholding transformation,but the state(federal government)still maintained the status of the largest shareholder,and the potential vitality was not released due to the incomplete privatization reform.After Putin came into power,on one hand,he pushed for the renationalization of energy enterprises and the state control of Gazprom,on the other hand,he also lifted a series of restrictions on the operation of Gazprom by the government,which pushed the re-nationalization and marketization forward parallelly for a period.However,due to the deepening of the Russian government's strategy to control the energy sector as the core industry,further privatization of Gazprom directly conflicted with this strategy,so the relevant measures of privatization have been completely stalled.The paper comprehensively discusses Gazprom's corporate governance structure in the comparison of the typical energy company from China and the US--Petro China and Exxon Mobil,and concludes that the Gazprom's corporate governance structure were similar,but the national(federal government's)role is obvious.The government retains seats on the board and is directly involved in major corporate decisions.Furthermore,in the gas market,Gazprom has a monopoly status compared to its peer enterprises,and its products are regarded as quasi-public goods and are supervised by the authorities.The government uses cross subsidization to guarantee Gazprom's profits.Therefore,there is still plenty of room for the privatization of Gazprom and the Russian gas industry it belongs to,but the measures the government has taken are far from enough.The conclusion of this paper is: from the perspective of the system change and governance status of Gazprom,the economic transition of Russia has not been completed.How to deal with the relationship between the state(government)and enterprises is still a problem to be solved in the economic transition of Russia.Russia still has a long way to go from a planned economy to a market economy.