The Tragedy of Property (eBook)

Maxim Trudolyubov is a Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute and the Editor-at-Large of Vedomosti, an independent Russian daily. He is also Director of Research at the independent think tank InLiberty.ru, Moscow, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times International Edition.

* Acknowledgements

* Foreword - Alexander Etkind

* Introduction: The Tragedy of Property

* Chapter 1. The Entrance

* 1. Homeless people

* 2. From city dwellers to citizens

* 3. Reflected modernity

* 4. The capital of succeeding generations

* Chapter 2. The Fence: Russian Title

* 1. Good fences make good neighbours

* 2. The permanence of the fence

* 3. Life without property rights

* 4. Russian title

* Chapter 3. Behind the Fence: the Privatization of Utopia

* 1. Private palaces

* 2. The privatization of Utopia

* 3. The birth of private life

* 4. The Dutch carpenter's house

* Chapter 4. Private Property: My Home Is My Castle

* 1. The myth of Sparta

* 2. The domus of our forebears

* 3. Mine and ours

* 4. Life, liberty and property

* 5. Christianity and Utopia

* 6. Utopia without property

* Chapter 5. Territory: Ambitions of Colonialism and Methods of Subjugation

* 1. Yermak the Conquistador

* 2. Stewardship and extraction

* 3. A natural resource irony of history

* Chapter 6. The Lock on the Door: the Priority of Security

* 1. The collapse of monarchy in the West

* 2. Success in the East

* 3. Control as the top priority

* 4. Security as a threat

* Chapter 7. Labourers: Moral Economics and the Art of Survival

* 1. The plough, the scythe and the axe

* 2. Moral economics

* 3. The commune against the private farmer

* 4. Dictatorship of the collective

* Chapter 8. Masters: the Tragedy of Domination

* 1. Owners and rulers

* 2. 'Let not the nobility be dispossessed of their estates without due process of law'

* 3. The birth of free people

* 4. Traduced and sacred law

* 5. The attempt to share

* Chapter 9. Architecture, Happiness and Order

* 1. The project we live in

* 2. Stalin's orders

* 3. Khrushchev's social revolution

* 4. Happiness and order

* 5. Russian order

* Chapter 10. Our Half-built Home

* 1. Favour from the tsar

* 2. Property without the market

* 3. A market without property

* Chapter 11. Two Options: Finish Building the Home, or Emigrate

* 1. Property without property rights

* 2. Democracy without the rule of law

* 3. Law enforcement without the rule of law

* 4. The open door

* Afterword

* Notes

* Index

'The Tragedy of Property is the story of how Russia came to be as it is: a land of aspiration and anxiety, of challenge and opportunity, and of endless unasked questions. This book must be read by anyone who wants to understand where Russia is headed, and where we will meet it.'
Samuel Greene, King's College London

"Cogent and vivid"
The TLS