ABSTRACT

Gaidar’s reform strategy-in our analogy, the jockey’s game plan-was to remove price controls and move ahead with the privatization of state enterprises. Given that in early 1992 the newly empowered Russian government had virtually no foreign currency reserves left in the Russian Central Bank (RCB), barely adequate food stocks, and no way to halt the unauthorized and spontaneous privatization of one-time state enterprises, Gaidar’s decisions at first glance are hard to fault.1