Soft capitalism and a hard industry: virtualism, the ‘transition industry’ and the restructuring of the Ukrainian coal industry

Abstract

This paper examines the geographical transfer of economic knowledge and practices from centres of neoliberalism in North America and Western Europe to post-soviet Ukraine. The paper argues that a 'transition industry' emerged in the wake of the disintegration of the soviet system whose purpose was to realize economic transition in central and eastern Europe. The paper discusses the emergence of a community of academic and professional economists affiliated to international financial institutions and academic and professional economic research organizations in Kyiv engaged in promoting the Washington consensus. This community identified the coal industry, located in the Ukrainian Donbas, as a barrier to structural economic reform and the political re-alignment of the country. The paper then examines the way the World Bank unsuccessfully attempted to force the coal industry to conform to its own policy prescriptions. The example points to the articulation not only of extra-local and internal processes of neoliberalization, but also with indigenous informal marketization. In this instance the World Bank's vision failed to materialize because state power could not be allied to its neoliberal project. key words soft capitalism Ukraine coal industry neoliberalism World Bank

Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces

“…In particular, the new institutions which are emerging as a consequence of neoliberalisation have changed the ways in which states use territories as a source of control and management (Cox 2003;Agnew 2005;Bialasiewicz et al 2005;Gilbert 2007;Jessop et al 2008). In doing so, they have brought about processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, or the reorganisation of territories under new structures conceptualised and dominated by non-state (whether sub-national or supra-national) actors (Toal & Luke 1994;Shore 2000;Sparke 2006;Jones 2008). Simultaneously, (neoliberal) globalisation has transformed sovereignty resulting in the 'unlimited and indivisible rule by state over a territory and the people in it' (Agnew 2009), including the ways in which sovereignty is territorialised (Murphy 1996;Sidaway 2003;Agnew 2009;Antonsich 2009).…”

“…(Kuus 2004, pp. 478-79) Furthermore, Adam Swain (2006) showed how the interplay between Western academics, consultants and donors, and local political elites led to the emergence of a network of institutions, dedicated to the neoliberalisation of post-socialist Europe and Eurasia. He termed this alliance the 'transition industry '.…”

Organisational geographies of power: Introduction to special issue

“…However, other tactics are associated with power relations that rely on in situ, face-to-face encounters. For example, Swain (2006) shows how travelling experts rely not on discursive strategies but more structural forms of power (i.e. their legitimacy as role models from the heartlands of 13 neoliberalism).…”

“…So understanding how neoliberal logics and actors gain power actually requires study of the spatialities of the practices of those actors and the resultant entanglements that influence those practices. These entanglements or networks reach trans-locally as the logic of neoliberalism and the strategies that underlie its power draw from connections that reach across scales and which draw on the structural influence of organizations such as the World Bank and particular states but also the discursive value of insights from think-tanks, academics, business schools and consultants (Dezalay and Garth, 2002;Swain, 2006). Understanding how such spatially diverse networks of association render neoliberalism powerful has been central to explaining its worldwide travels.…”

The Donbass as a Space of Socialist Enthusiasm, Memory, and Trauma: Cinematic and Literary Images

“…In contrast to the countries of Eastern Europe, where the course of reforms brought about a rapid erosion of the state-owned industrial sector, this did not happen in Ukraine and the Donbass was preserved with a huge concentration of active and functioning Soviet-era industrial stock, whose specialization in coal mining, metallurgy, and heavy industry became even more pronounced in the post-Soviet era (Swain 2006;Lyakh 2007).…”