It is a common assumption in scholarship and political commentary that Russia's turbulent transition to a market economy was inspired, or even imposed, by Western advisors. Both critics and champions of Russian capitalism usually point to the impact of Chicago-School-economics on the alleged 'shock-therapy' of the ailing Soviet planned economy.

In his talk, Dr. Tobias Rupprecht will make the case that the ideas behind Russia's economic transformation were not an alien concept imported from the West in the 1990s. Various notions of global economic integration, free prices, private property, labour discipline through deregulation, and the necessity of a strong political executive to implement these, can be discerned amongst small groups of Soviet intellectual elites throughout the 1970s and 80s. By the time the first IMF advisors set foot in Moscow, the Russian liberals' plans for reform had long been formed.

Tobias is a global historian with a particular interest in the history of (state) socialism and (neo)liberalism. His research has mostly addressed Soviet and Eastern European encounters with the Global South, and economic reform debates in socialist countries. He taught both Russian history in Denmark and the UK before becoming Head of Research Group 'Peripheral Liberalism' at the Cluster of Excellence 'Contestations of the Liberal Script' in Berlin.