When the communist East Bloc collapsed and the Soviet Union itself fell apart, the West promised billions of dollars in aid. But a raft of ill-conceived aid programs, fly-in-fly-out consultants, and reforms financed by Western taxpayers did little to help the nations of the region reconstruct themselves as democratic, free-market states. Collision and Collusion is the first book to explain where the Western dollars went, why Western nations did so little to help, and why their plans so often backfired.

Collision and Collusion takes a hard, behind-the-scenes look at aid efforts, first in Central Europe, then in Russia and Ukraine. The book shows the slick "trans-actors" who played all sides and the globe-trotting "econo-lobbyists" who made grandiose promises. It exposes how Harvard's best and brightest, entrusted with millions of aid dollars, colluded with a Russian clan to create a system of tycoon capitalism that will plague the Russian people for decades--and which is widely blamed on the West. Collision and Collusion tells the tortuous tale of how Western donors, who set out to build democracy, instead often rekindled corruption, communist legacies, and anticapitalist sentiments.

About the Author

Janine R. Wedel is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at George Washington University and Research Fellow at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies there. She is the author of The Private Poland: An Anthropologist's Look at Everyday Life and The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism and articles in such publications as the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal Europe, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor.