Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Presenation by Anatoly Chubais, former chief of Russia’s State Privatization Committee
Combining keen political analysis with the unique perspective of a native observer, Lilia Shevtsova offers a valuable assessment of the forces that will shape the post-Yeltsin era.
Why has Russian law not got stuck, although plenty of laws have been promulgated and all the legal bodies have undergone substantial reform? So why do not Russians trust and use the judicial system to a greater extent?
In making assessments of Russia's behavior in the world, it is critical that we recognize that Russia is not a totalitarian state ruled by a Communist Party with a single, clearly articulated foreign policy. That state disappeared in 1991. Rather, Russia is a democratizing state, and Russia's foreign policy, in turn, is a product of domestic politics in a pluralistic system.
This paper examines the problems of Russia's post-communist economic transformation. Its main thesis is that the Russian attempt at radical economic reform largely failed, because of extraordinary rent-seeking by old enterprise managers through export rents, subsidized credits, import subsidies and direct government subsidies, while they gained little from privatization.
President Clinton announced new funding for an expanded threat reduction initiative in Russia. Unfortunately this new funding commitment still does not match the threat. The degradation in security of Russia’s nuclear weapon complex and the economic collapse in August 1998 has put the safety of nuclear materials and nuclear intelligence in jeopardy.