The co-editor of a new book on the efforts of 28 socialist countries to move toward a market-based economy in the post-Soviet world has concluded that Russia’s bungled reform effort was “the biggest man-made economic disaster on record.”
Vladimir Popov, co-editor of “Transition and Institutions: The Experience of Gradual and Late Reformers,” launched this week in Moscow, said Russia suffered more than all the former socialist states because key figures like Yegor Gaidar and Viktor Chernomyrdin too drastically cut spending on ordinary government, including health care, education and law and order.
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