ABSTRACT
The Gorbachev era ended with only polite notice at the end of 1991, and Boris Yeltsin's path was suddenly clear, for the moment, to radically redirect Russia's economic course. The period of Yeltsin's brief tenure as the indisputable leader of Russia, with unique authority to fashion a new economic course, was charged with significance for the country's future. In Russia, however, Yeltsin and the Russian legislature came very close to doing just that, beginning in 1990. It is true that Yeltsin's populist tendencies meshed well with the profound restiveness among Russian people at the time, and the ideas he articulated about economic reform comfortably fit the growing public support for a market economy. Although Yeltsin's economic reform program was unprecedented in its scale and scope, in some ways the course of change from 1991 to 1993 was not new to Russia.
