Gorbachev's Struggle For Economic Reform
The word "struggle" is apt. By searching through the economic literature and by intelligent use of Sovietology, Aslund is able to reconstruct the disagreements, debates and compromises that have marked the process of reform over the past few years. An impressive book, written with cool realism by a Swedish economist who draws on his experience at Sweden's embassy in Moscow in 1984-87.
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The jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has revealed the fault lines running through the post-Soviet political economy. The reforms and privatization of the 1990s were so flawed and unfair as to make them unstable. A backlash was inevitable. Given Vladimir Putin's authoritarian tendencies, that backlash has proved equally flawed and unfair-and perhaps equally unstable.
Analysis of the 'Shatalin plan' to introduce a market economy within 500 days.
Most people think that Russia's economic problems are due to the shock of fast and radical reforms. Actually, the Russian economy is not very liberalized at all, and its problems have been caused by reforms that were too slow and partial, not too sweeping. Russia suffers not from too free a market but from corruption, which thrives by preying on an unwieldy bureaucracy. Still, the outlook for the months ahead is promising. If Poland could do it, why can't Russia? The private sector got a salutary wake-up call from the 1998 collapse of the ruble, and the strength of the political center bodes well for economic recovery and social change.
