STEPHEN KOTKIN
(Stephen Mark Kotkin)
In this context, “rent" means payment is required for the use or right to use anything such as using land for a pipeline, for mining, prospecting for oil, the rights to fish for caviar sturgeon, erecting a building, obtaining an official document, etc. The Russian economic system and culture has created a striving for getting paid to grant rights as opposed to getting paid for making something, creating something, or performing a service for someone. In the breakup of the Soviet Union, some individuals obtained (by various means) the right to charge rent to others for much of the great trove of Russian land, waters and other natural resources. They became billionaires – oligarchs – and many are still paying off government officials to control those rights.
Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also co-director of the program in history and the practice of diplomacy and the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
