Comparing Apples: Normalcy, Russia, and the Remaining Post-Socialist World*

Shleifer and Treisman (2005) argue that Russia is a “normal country. ” Their benchmark for normalcy, however, refers primarily to middle-income countries like Mexico and Argentina. We propose that a more meaningful benchmark is the experience of other post-socialist transition countries, which share common political and economic histories with Russia, and have faced similar transition obstacles since communism’s collapse. We compare Russia’s economic performance, media freedom, democracy, and corruption since Russia began transition, to these benchmarks in all other post-socialist countries since they began their transitions. We find that Russia consistently and significantly performs below normal compared to its cohort