ABSTRACT
This chapter will investigate how, after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russian messianism rose again to become a major force from within the opposition Communist Party.
The failure of the reformers
The USSR ceased to exist on 31 December 1991; on 2 January 1992 the Russian government began to implement a programme of economic shock therapy, worked out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Deputy Prime Minister Egor Gaidar. These economic reforms sharply accelerated both the decline in output and the rate of inflation, which rose to 2,000 per cent over the year 1992. Living standards fell and poverty increased. Over the next few years many Russians found that their wages and pensions were paid late or not at all. The process of privatization benefited former political and economic elites and a small number of “oligarchs”, whose conspicuous lifestyle far outshone that of the old Communist bosses. Corruption and crime prospered, with perhaps billions of dollars of IMF loans disappearing and people at the very top of the State coming under suspicion. Meanwhile life expectancy fell and with it the size of the population.
