Lost And Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland
“For the next few years, the overriding goal of President Yeltsin’s government would be the dismantling of the massive planned economy. Yeltsin had banned the Communist Party and implemented a program of “shock therapy”: price controls were relaxed, the currency was floated, and a mass program of privatization had begun.Prices shot up twenty-six-fold in a single year. Russia’s colonies taking their independence had already served to dismember the old economy. Economic activity had halved and inf...lation was taking off. Since the Central Bank kept printing money and offering cheap credits to industry, it quickly rose to 2,000 percent, leaving the ruble worthless. By mid-1993 over 40 percent of Russians were living in poverty—as opposed to 1.5 percent in the late Soviet period.Almost at once, the old party elite and the factory bosses started privatizing the institutions they managed. Within three to four years, 60–70 percent of state enterprises were privatized. The bosses siphoned off money and raw materials from state enterprises into co-ops, private banks, and out of Russia, into offshore companies.MoreLess
Read book Lost And Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland for free
Write Review:
Guest
Read Also
7 / 10
User Reviews: