ABSTRACT
The state had monopolized economic decision making in the Soviet Union since the end of NEP—the New Economic Policy, which lasted from about 1921 until roughly 1929. Boris Yeltsin, then chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet, argued vehemently that the government plan was too conservative, and in July Gorbachev and Yeltsin agreed to appoint a working group to develop an alternative plan for transition to a market economy, headed by economist Stanislav Shatalin. On December 8, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus signed an agreement, initiated by Yeltsin, which stated that "the USSR is terminating its existence as a subject of international law and as a geopolitical reality". Sergei Vasilev, the head of the Russian government's Center for Economic Reform, which worked closely with Gaidar during his tenure in Yeltsin's cabinet, underscored Yavlinskii's perspective in an April 1992 interview.
