Реферат: Consolidation Of Democracy In PostSoviet Russia Essay

regime has imposed upon the Russian people. Capitalism is viewed as a necessary ingredient (though not

sufficient) contingency of a stable democracy. All established democracies are located in countries that

place economic manufacture and aggregation in the hands of privately owned firms, with distribution of

scarce resource achieved through market forces (Smitter 66). The movement away from the penetrative,

all-encompassing Soviet economic octopus has caused enormous hardships for the Russian people. It has

placed economic uncertainties in the path of political realities, resulting in policies that attempt to address

the often contradictory objectives of economic liberalization in the wake of political democratization.

Sweeping in after the failed coup of August 1991, economic reformers, led by Prime Minister Egor

Gaidar, placed the Russian economy on a steady diet of economic shock therapy. The government?s

misguided attempt to rest its reform program on fulfillment of a limited number of macroeconomic

variables left the Russian economy in disarray. Despite a precipitous decline in economic productivity,

radical reformers defended their macroeconomic policy, arguing that the supply side of the Russian

economy would receive proper attention after stabilization. But what were the Russians to do in the

meantime? The revolutionary fervor that characterized the early economic reforms did not take into

account the punitive realities of their policies. As Steven Fish writes:

?All had advocated ?transition to a market economy.? But this goal had been more of a dream than a

demand, and few had actually considered how to achieve it (Fish 215).

With all due deference to clich?, the early Russian economic policies can be succinctly summarized in

?Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.?

Khrushchev stated that a country may follow its own road to socialism, and in a perverse sense that logic

is still be applicable for Russian affairs. But, rather the mandate should be that each country should

follow its own road towards capitalism. An examination of what the Communist apparatus left in its

wake should cause pause for any free-market optimist. Seventy plus years of state socialism has left

Russia with a two-ton gorilla on its collective economic back.

On page 66 and 67 of his ?Dangers And Dilemmas of Democracy?, Smitter outlines possible starting

scenarios for incipient democracies. A best case scenario finds the nation with a preceding autocracy that

had already concentrated profits, encouraged the private accumulation of wealth, increased the state?s

fiscal capacity, invested in the country?s physical infrastructure and provided a positive starting point for

international trade. Countries, such as Chile and Spain, that had inherited these elements, found the