Professor Rudolf Pikhoia Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
How the Socialist Economy was destroyed in the USSR (One reason for the collapse of the country)
On 25 September 1990, one of the first meetings of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Russia was held in the building of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. The agenda consisted of the issue of ensuring the economic sovereignty of Russia in the USSR. Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Yuri Skokov, responsible for industrial policy, spoke with bitterness about his meeting with Minister of Metallurgy of the USSR Seraphim Baibakov: “We spoke to him about our sovereignty, and he said: ‘I’m sorry, but last year I became an owner of property and a legal successor of state property.’ Kolpakov became Krupp. Now he creates 10-15 companies, leaving a small management structure. It is presidential rule in the steel-casting complex.” Frankly speaking, after I became familiar with the transcript of this meeting, it made me think. When assessing the reforms that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s it is, perhaps, the only question to which all representatives of Russian political science answer in the same fashion. Both supporters of radical reforms (we shall call them, conventionally, the E. T. Gaidar-Anatoly Chubai school) and their opponents in the wider political spectrum – from former Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers N.I. Ryzhkov, to present Assistant to the President and scholar, S. Y. Glazyev, answer the question about the beginning period of privatisation and destruction of the public sector in the same manner. They are unanimous in recognising that privatisation dates back to the early 1990s, and is concentrated in the period from 1992 to 1996. The arguments of the supporters of this point of view are simple and straightforward, and based on the legalistic method. The beginning of privatisation was declared in the law of the Russian Federation “On privatisation of state and municipal enterprises in the Russian Federation”, dated 3 July 1991, and in the first state privatisation program of state and municipal enterprises in the Russian Federation for 1992 (approved by the resolution of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11 June 1992). For some, it is a reason to take pride
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