Economic Reform in Russia

The Review is pleased to give hospitality to CLARE group articles, but is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed; responsibility for these rests with the authors. Members of the CLARE Group are MJ Artis, AJC Britton, WA Brown, WJ Carlin, JS Flemming, CAE Goodhart, JA Kay, RCO Matthews, D Miles, MH Miller, PM Oppenheimer, MV Posner, WB Reddaway, JR Sargent, MF Scott, ZA Silberston, JHB Tew, S Wadhwani and M Weale. In August 1992 the Group published an article on Russian reform written by Peter Oppenheimer drawing inter alia on his personal experiences there. This article represents a desk-bound sequel. Our periods overlap to a modest extent. 1992 marked the beginning of a new chapter in the Russian reform process. On the first of January that year prices and trade were liberalised by a recently formed government led by Yegor Gaidar who had earlier been Minister of Finance and was a professional economist and analyst o f the Russian economy. Our focus is almost exclusively on the Russian Federation with only passing references to other parts of the former Soviet Union. Gaidar never expressed confidence in the durability of his tenure or, therefore, of his policies and suffered a number of setbacks in his relations with Mr Yeltsin, with the parliament, and the central bank. After a year he was replaced as Prime Minister, reemerged as a Presidential adviser, and then as a Deputy Prime Minister, under Mr Chernomyrdin, responsible for the economy. He left this last position when the Chernomyrdin government was reconstructed after the disappointment, from Gaidar's point of view, of the general election and the constitutional referendum of October 1993. Cbernomyrdin promised greater pragmatism and an end to what he called 'market romanticism' (in an appeal to sceptics). So far, however, his government's economic policies have shown less change than expected, at least on the macro side. The purpose of this article is to review the new chapter that began in 1992.