ABSTRACT
Post-Soviet Russia was considerably downsized from both the pre-1917 Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Russia’s problems were as immense and complex as the country itself. One of the most costly legacies of 70 years of Soviet totalitarianism was that once it collapsed it left so little on which to build. The most pronounced contrast between Russia and former authoritarian countries involved the economy. Countries such as Greece and Chile began their new eras with reasonable facsimiles of market economies. Russia began the immensely difficult project of rebuilding and turning itself into a democratic, free-market country with a president who in important ways was ill prepared for leading that effort. Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar pushed ahead with the one key part of their economic program: privatization of the approximately 200,000 state-owned enterprises that made up the Russian economy.
