International audienceThe Russian economic situation is gradually improving after the crises of 1990 and 1998. Russia's economy has important and indisputable assets, but its history weighs on the confidence of national and international economic operators. Shock therapy was the solution provided to cope with a double transition, that of a planned economy to a market economy and that of a militarized economy to a civil economy. The already large underground economy before the collapse of the USSR accelerated its activities, because barter is a response to real inflation, to the arrears of all companies, to the instability of the banking system. Corruption is expressed at the highest levels of the state by the former nomenklatura and the pri...