All in all, one should probably grant sincerity to Yeltsin in his desire to transform Russia into a capitalist, or at least market-oriented, and democratic state. The first probably means to him above all a great abundance of material goods, as in an American supermarket. The second signifies especially an abolition of Communist control and restrictions with real popular participation in political life, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yeltsin is something of a populist, and he owes his initial rise to the very top to popular appeal and popular election. Not an economist himself, he repeatedly put his confidence in such economic reformers as Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, or Sergei Kiriyenko. Only this confidence did not last long. The enormous difficulties of the reform process and the opposition of the increasingly powerful interests that did not want economic reform, or at least that particular kind of economic reform, made the President retreat repeatedly and try something else. In this tortuous process Yeltsin, like Gorbachev before him, was vilified from all sides, and time and again buried politically if not physically by foe and even friend. Once the most acclaimed politician in Russia, Yeltsin's support in opinion polls would drop to as low as 2 or even 1 per cent. Yet Yeltsin has refused to die either physically, in spite of a very dangerous bypass operation and constant illness, or even politically, but would actively reemerge, greatly assisted by the extremely strong position of the President in the Russian constitution, often to fire leading figures in the government and change its course somewhat. George Breslauer and other specialists have commented trenchantly on this idiosyncratic ruling style. The Russian President's ability to survive and even to remain, at least in a sense, on top of Russian politics, has continuously baffled many observers, and it even led some of them to despair. Survivability, however, exacted a heavy price. Most commentators came to interpret Yeltsin's behavior simply in terms of his determination to hold on to his position rather than as a pursuit of any economic or political principles.
It was in November, 1991, that Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais joined Yeltsin's government. Gaidar was appointed deputy prime minister for economic reform on November 7, 1991, first deputy prime minister on March 2, 1992, and acting prime minister on June 15, 1992, to be replaced by prime minister Viktor
Chernomyrdin on December 14, 1992. Gaidar returned to the government as first deputy prime minister in charge of the economy in September 1993 only to be dismissed again in January 1994. Chubais became minister for privatization and chairman of the State Committee for the Management of State Property (G.K.I.). He was to serve in several important capacities later and, like other of Yeltsin's assistants, would fall in and out of the President's favor. But privatization remains his main contribution to the transformation of Russia. As one specialist put it, Chubais "had the organizational talent to create the G.K.I. from scratch; he skillfully navigated through the rifts of conflicting political and economic interests. He demonstrated rare determination and staying power to see this grandiose project through to its conclusion," Yet, perhaps inevitably, the reform attracted as much blame as praise. In part because the legislature modified Chubais's original scheme, its result was a sweeping appropriation of state possessions, sometimes on an enormous scale, by a relatively small group of people already in charge of them or connected to those in charge - a major contribution to the ongoing differentiation between the poor and the very rich.
Economic reform in general had similar and still other problems to confront. There was much effort and considerable accomplishment. Even if Russia was slow to move in new economic directions, it was not as slow as, for example, Ukraine. And all the economies switching from Communism to the market have experienced major difficulties, including that of East Germany, in spite of its great special advantages. Together with the privatization of state property, private enterprise rapidly spread in Russia, ranging from the activities of leading international companies to those of the uncounted and often miserably poor local entrepreneurs. Moscow and to a lesser extent St. Petersburg and other cities acquired a great variety of consumer goods of every kind, impossible even to imagine in Soviet times. In fact, luxury items, such as Mercedes cars, became particularly prominent. Concurrently Russians obtained the unrestricted right to travel abroad, and colonies of rich Russians appeared in the French and the Italian Rivieras, in Switzerland, and on Greek islands. The ruble, first subject to inflation, which cost many people their entire savings, seemed to stabilize in 1996 and 1997. 1997 was a good year on the Russian stock exchange, and foreign investment in the country picked up pace.
Yet, in truth, the economy had been running down. Gorbachev's indiciseveness and years lost for fundamental reform, much criticized by many, Yeltsin notably included, were repeating themselves under Yeltsin. The government kept borrowing money abroad to stay afloat. Agriculture was in shambles, with the old structure in disarray and no effective substitute available. Industry declined from year to year, with the entire huge military-industrial complex largely cost ineffective or simply useless. Short of funds, the government fell months behind in paying wages and salaries, and this lack of payments and lack of money spread throughout the economy. Pensioners were among the obvious sufferers. The situation was made worse by the fact that the Soviet Union had never had a strong social secu-
rity system, especially if we exclude the social services of the very enterprises that were collapsing. Because of a drastic shortage of funds, such state institutions as the prison system and the armed forces themselves reached a desparate state. Prisoners' conditions, political persecution and punishment aside, declined compared to the Soviet period. Soldiers and officers were "advised" by their superiors to fish, hunt, farm, and gather mushrooms in order to survive until the federal government accumulated enough cash to pay military wage arrears. At times uniformed servicemen begged in the streets. As usual, the situation was more complicated than a very brief summary can indicate. Thus the penury of the army resulted partly because the high command and certain other elements were blocking its effective reduction in size. Similarly other, and sometimes the same, interests kept hanging on to the heavy and largely obsolete defense industry. And it proved very difficult to close mines, even when they operated at a loss or became superfluous. Entrenched administrators on top had a common cause with workers who were losing their jobs, often with nothing to replace them. Yet with all the variations and qualifications, the financial catastrophe loomed ever larger.
The central Russian government found it very difficult or impossible to control and sometimes simply to influence the component parts of the huge Russian state even after the fourteen non-Russian republics had separated themselves. Eventually eighty-nine distinct autonomous units, these component parts claimed often far-reaching rights and privileges, stopping in the case of Tatarstan just short of full sovereignty, although so far only Chechnia has fought a major war for independence. As regional interests and electoral democracy gained ground, local officials had all the less reason to obey Moscow. Most of the directives from the center were simply ignored. Characteristically, the central government failed to collect the greater amount of the taxes due to it, one reason for its financial weakness. Corruption and crime grew rapidly, to the point that Russia was listed as the third most corrupt country on the face of the earth by an organization issuing such statistics. Exploiting privatization or exporting oil, gas, metals, and other valuable materials abroad, often with the aid of special permissions or even illegally, as well as profiting in other ways from the unhinged economy, some people quickly became enormously rich. Often compared to the robber barons of the early stage of capitalism in other countries, the Russian barons unfortunately proved to be different in that they took their enormous fortunes abroad rather than use them to develop the economy of their native land. In fact, in the post-Soviet years very much more capital left Russia than came in the form of loans, aid, and investments put together. Mafias, pornography, prostitution, and violent crime experienced an exponential growth as gangs fought for their turf. The victims of violence seemed to be especially bankers, but also people of many other occupations, including mere passers-by. The disastrous ecological condition of much of the country, brought strikingly to the attention of the world when glasnost replaced secrecy, only continued to deteriorate. Still more revealing of the ongoing disaster were the medical and mortality statistics,