After ten years of perestroika and thirty months of 'Radical Economic Reform', the economic situation in Russia has not improved. On the contrary, it is worse now than ten years ago. In 1990-91, there was widespread confidence in Russia that the improvement of the economic situation depended on taking decisive steps in the direction of a market economy. Today many Russians look back and feel that they have suffered unnecessary economic losses because of their government's haphazard and often inconsistent policies. Although the jury is still out on the wisdom of radical economic reform to turn Russia into a market economy open to the world, it is clear that those who live in the struggling transition economy cannot wait for the reform policy's painful consequences to disappear.