СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ СОЦИАЛЬНЫЕ И СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ WOMEN AND RUSSIAN MODERNIZATION Elise Kiregian Department of Humanities Technical Career Institutes 320 West 31st St., New York, NY, USA, 10001 This article analyzes Russian women and their ability to embrace Western educational and business practices following the fall of the Soviet Union. <...> As recently as the 1980s, women managers in Russia were rare. <...> Unlike women in Western nations who tend to frame their emerging role in ideological terms, Russian women enrolled in academic programs that gave them valuable skills for the market economy. <...> The paper also shows that Russian women are adapting to these changes more rapidly than men. <...> This study explores the considerable changes that have taken place in business education as Russia has adapted to the needs of a world economy. <...> The Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree is now popular across Russia and is the source of the new business management concepts that explain the data. <...> Russians are now far more likely to speak English, to work in a service-related job, to hold personal investment portfolios and to be able to work outside of Russia. <...> These are massive changes compared to the years before 1991. <...> Key words: education, market economy, business curricula, master of business administration (MBA), Peace Corps, women, Russian women Since the fall of the Soviet system, enormous change has swept across Russia. <...> These changes include the decline of Soviet military and political power, the breakup of the Soviet states and the topsy-turvy dismantling of the Soviet economic system. <...> Much of the earlier scholarship dealing with the 1990’s concerned the question of whether Russia had shifted toward Western practices at all. <...> More accurately with the fall of the Soviet system, Russia found itself thrust into a world market economy for which it was poorly prepared. <...> A market economy, which is the clear, dominant force in the world’s economy, requires products and services to be made in a cost effective manner and to be of high quality. <...> Russian companies have had to demonstrate their competence by matching their products and services against companies in an open market environment. <...> This paper derives from research for a recent <...>