ABSTRACT
The struggle over Sviazinvest is just one example of the chicanery associated with privatization in Russia and the reform process in the 1990s. Why did Sviazinvest, along with almost all the other privatization efforts in Russia, become so encrusted with scandal and become so badly mismanaged? What, if anything, could Russia have done to spare itself some of these misadventures? Digging even deeper, why did Russian reformers choose a shock therapy strategy and by extension a program of rapid privatization, a mistake that will take years to correct? Why didn’t they move gradually? Why is it that some post-communist countries, particularly Poland, have succeeded in avoiding most of those difficulties?
