Economic Transformation in Russia.

• Author: Leitzel, Jim

This is the third in a series of books, edited or co-edited by Anders Aslund, consisting of contributions by leading Russian and Western academics and participants in the ongoing Russian economic reforms. The papers in this volume date from mid-1993, after the April referendum that provided a boost to the efforts of economic reformers, and prior to the parliamentary elections of December 1993, in which the leading reform party, Russia's Choice, had a disappointing showing. The timing is important, not just because of the hopeful air that it lends to many of the contributions, but also because in general the papers are tied closely to the contemporaneous events. As Professor Aslund writes in the introduction, the "hope is that this volume will provide the reader with an analytical picture of the current state of the Russian economy, of achievements and failures to date, and of the line of thinking that is underlying the policies of the Russian government." The book succeeds in achieving these goals, though the picture of reforms presented here is clearly more positive - which is not to say uncompelling - than in most competing accounts. Perhaps the source of the optimism goes beyond the timing, since many of the contributors were intimately involved with the reforms that they assess.

There is an introduction, by Aslund, and eleven chapters. The first four chapters (by Stanley Fischer; Boris Federov and Andrei Kazmin; Jeffrey Sachs; and Jacek Rostowski) are concerned with the macroeconomy. Chapter 5, on foreign trade regulation, is by Petr Aven, who as Minister of External Economic Relations was the official responsible for foreign trade policy during the Gaidar reforms. There are three chapters on privatization and state enterprises, by privatization chairman Anatoly Chubais and Maria Vishnevskaya; Maxim Boycko, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny; and Irina Boeva and Tatania Dolgopiatova. The final three chapters offer a summary of the effects of reform on the "Conditions of Life," by Andrei Illarionov, Richard Layard, and Peter Orszag; a comparison of Polish and Russian reforms by Aslund; and a call for radical economic liberalization by Russian economist Vitaly Naishul.

This volume is marked by a substantial amount of internal agreement, both on strategies for reform and heroes and villains. Heroes are the Russian reformers such as Gaidar, Federov, and Chubais; goats are the old Supreme Soviet, the Central Bank of Russia, its chairman...