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Collapse of the Soviet Union. Post-Soviet Russia. The Yeltsin (Yeltsin, Boris) presidency (1991–99). Economic reforms
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Collapse of the Soviet Union
An ill-conceived, ill-planned, and poorly executed coup attempt occurred Aug. 19–21, 1991, bringing an end to the Communist Party and accelerating the movement to disband the Soviet Union. The coup was carried out by hard-line Communist Party, KGB, and military officials attempting to avert a new liberalized union treaty and return to the old-line party values. The most significant anti-coup role was played by Yeltsin, who brilliantly grasped the opportunity to promote himself and Russia. He demanded the reinstatement of Gorbachev as U. S. S. R. president, but, when Gorbachev returned from house arrest in the Crimea, Yeltsin set out to demonstrate that he was the stronger leader. Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in Russia and seized all of its property. From a strictly legal point of view, this should have been done by court order, not by presidential decree. Russia systematically laid claim to most Soviet property on its territory.
Martin McCauley Dominic Lieven
Post-Soviet Russia
The Yeltsin (Yeltsin, Boris) presidency (1991–99)
The U. S. S. R. legally ceased to exist on Dec. 31, 1991. The new state, called the Russian Federation, set off on the road to democracy and a market economy without any clear conception of how to complete such a transformation in the world's largest country. Like most of the other former Soviet republics, it entered independence in a state of serious disorder and economic chaos.
Economic reforms
Upon independence, Russia faced economic collapse. The new Russian government not only had to deal with the consequences of the mistakes in economic policy of the Gorbachev period, but it also had to find a way to transform the entire Russian economy. In 1991 alone, gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by about one-sixth, and the budget deficit was approximately one-fourth of GDP. The Gorbachev government had resorted to printing huge amounts of money to finance both the budget and the large subsidies to factories and on food at a time when the tax system was collapsing. Moreover, the price controls on most goods led to their scarcity. By 1991 few items essential for everyday life were available in traditional retail outlets. The entire system of goods distribution was on the verge of disintegration. The transformation of the command economy to a market-based one was fraught with difficulties and had no historical precedent. Since the central command economy had existed in Russia for more than 70 years, the transition to a market economy proved more difficult for Russia than for the other countries of eastern Europe. Russian reformists had no clear plan, and circumstances did not give them the luxury of time to put together a reform package. In addition, economic reform threatened various entrenched interests, and the reformists had to balance the necessities of economic reform with powerful vested interests.
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Although Soviet industry was one of the largest in the world, it was also very inefficient and expensive to support, complicating any changeover to a market-based economy. Industry was heavily geared toward defense and heavy industrial products whose conversion to light- and consumer-based industries would require much time. The industrial workforce, though highly educated, did not have the necessary skills to work in a market environment and would therefore need to be retrained, as would factory and plant managers.
In an effort to bring goods into stores, the Yeltsin government removed price controls on most items in January 1992—the first essential step toward creating a market-based economy. Its immediate goal was achieved. However, it also spurred inflation, which became a daily concern for Russians, whose salaries and purchasing power declined as prices for even some of the most basic goods continued to rise. The government frequently found itself printing money to fill holes in the budget and to prevent failing factories from going bankrupt. By 1993 the budget deficit financed by the printing of money was one-fifth of GDP. Consequently, the economy became increasingly dollarized as people lost faith in the value of the ruble. Inflationary pressures were exacerbated by the establishment of a “ruble zone” when the Soviet Union collapsed: many of the former republics continued to issue and use rubles and receive credits from the Russian Central Bank, thereby further devaluing the ruble. This ruble zone became an onerous burden for the Russian economy as an additional source of inflation. In the summer of 1993 the government pulled out of the ruble zone, effectively reducing Russian influence over many of the former Soviet republics.
During the Soviet era the factory had been not only a place of work but was also often the base of social services, providing benefits such as child care, vacations, and housing. Therefore, if the government allowed many industries to collapse, it would have had to make provisions not only for unemployed workers but for a whole array of social services. The government's infrastructure could not cope with such a large additional responsibility. Yet the inflation caused by keeping these factories afloat led to waning support for both Yeltsin and economic reform, as many average Russians struggled to survive. Starved for cash, factories reverted to paying workers and paying off debts to other factories in kind. Therefore, in many areas of Russia a barter economy emerged as both factories and workers tried to accommodate themselves to the economic crisis. Moreover, debts between factories were enormous; though they were diligently recorded, there was little hope of eventual collection. Thus, it was not uncommon for workers to go months without being paid and for workers to get paid in, for example, rubber gloves or crockery, either because they made such things themselves or because their factory had received payment for debt in kind.
In 1995 the government, through loans secured from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and through income from the sale of oil and natural gas, succeeded in stabilizing the national currency by establishing a ruble corridor. This corridor fixed the exchange rate of the ruble that the Russian Central Bank would defend. Consequently, the rate of inflation dropped, and some macroeconomic stabilization ensued. However, the government continued to borrow large sums of money on domestic and foreign markets while avoiding real structural reforms of the economy. By failing to establish an effective tax code and collection mechanisms, clear property rights, and a coherent bankruptcy law and by continued support of failing industries, the government found it increasingly expensive to maintain an artificially set ruble exchange rate. The problem was that the government-set exchange rate did not reflect the country's economic reality and thereby made the ruble the target of speculators. As a result, the ruble collapsed in 1998, and the government was forced to withhold payments on its debt amid a growing number of bankruptcies. The ruble eventually stabilized and inflation diminished, but the living standards of most Russians improved little, though a small proportion of the population became very wealthy. Moreover, most economic gains occurred in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a handful of other major urban areas, while vast tracts of Russia faced economic depression.
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Another element of economic reform was the privatization of Russian industries. Reformists in the Yeltsin government sought to speed privatization, hoping that the threat of a return to communism would be more remote once a Russian capitalist class had developed. The reformists, like many Western economists, believed that only by privatizing factories and enterprises and letting them fight for survival would the economy have any hope of recovering. Initially, the government implemented a voucher system according to which every citizen could in theory become a stakeholder in Russian industry and its privatization. Russians could invest their voucher (the sum of 10, 000 rubles), sell it, or use it to bid for additional shares in specific enterprises. However, the average Russian did not benefit from this rather complicated scheme. By the end of 1992, some one-third of enterprises in the services and trade fields had been privatized.
The second wave of privatization occurred in 1994–95. However, to the average Russian, the process seemed to benefit solely the friends of those in power, who received large chunks of Russian industry for little. In particular, Russia's companies in the natural resource sector were sold at prices well below those recommended by the IMF to figures who were close to “the Family, ” meaning Yeltsin and his daughter and their allies in the government. From this process emerged the “oligarchs, ” individuals who, because of their political connections, came to control huge segments of the Russian economy. Many of these oligarchs bought factories for almost nothing, stripped them, sold what they could, and then closed them, creating huge job losses. By the time Yeltsin left office in 1999, most of the Russian economy had been privatized.
The stripping of factories played a major role in the public's disenchantment with the development of capitalism in Russia. To many Russians, it seemed that bandit capitalism had emerged. The majority of the population had seen their living standards drop, their social services collapse, and a great rise in crime and corruption. As a result, Yeltsin's popularity began to plummet.
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