In the course of the last decade and a half, the Russian fisheries sector has earned a reputation as being inefficient, criminalized and unreformable. Fundamental disagreements among decision makers on how the sector should be managed have frustrated all attempts to create a stable legal and institutional framework for the fisheries, despite a general consensus that stability and predictability are crucial factors if the current stagnation is to be overcome. In the chapter it is argued that the sector has been caught in a 'vicious cycle of reform': A number of major reorginazations since the early 1990s, aimed at improving the sector's performance, have instead resulted in a gradual loss of valuable expertise. Moreover, the continuous changes in the legal and institutional framework have caused business actors to focus on short-term rather than long-term gains, resulting in, inter alia, a very low investment rate and widespread poaching and overfishing. However, over the last couple of years the Russian political leadership has given increasing attention to the problems in the fisheries sector, and some progress has been made, particularly in the field of law-making.