ABSTRACT
The opening signal for shock therapy to commence was given on 2 January 1992, with the announcement of a sweeping liberalization of the previously state controlled prices. As such, there was certainly nothing wrong with this move. Freedom for the market to determine prices was one of the very necessary conditions for a functioning Russian market economy to be established. The problem was that a number of supporting measures would also have needed to be implemented, above all so in the political sphere. And that, as we shall see below, was where the programme went seriously wrong.
