Marek Dabrowski: Remembering My Friend Yegor Gaidar
[Marek Dabrowski is President of Polish think tank CASE (Centre for Social and Economic Research)]
The sudden death of Yegor Gaidar on December 16, 2009 came as surprise to many of his friends, myself included, well aware though I was of his serious health problems. Over some twenty years, I was fortunate to collaborate with Yegor very closely: before he came to government; when, in late 1991, he became the Deputy, and then Acting Prime Minister; and when he came back to academia. I knew Yegor the policymaker, Yegor the politician, Yegor the academic, and, most importantly, Yegor the human being.
An awful lot of words have already been devoted to his role in initiating and carrying out the critical phase of Russia’s economic transition in 1992-1993. Some questions are simply destined to remain unanswered. Such as how complete and consistent the original “Gaidar program” was. Why some of its intended effects – macroeconomic stabilisation and growth – only came about with a big delay. Whether the economic and social cost could have been smaller. And what the team of “young reformers”, led by Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, would have done had they entered the same river again.
I have already on a few occasions expressed my opinion about the serious mistakes that were made in the last years of the Soviet Union and early years of the new Russia. These were mistakes that made the economic transition longer and probably more painful than it could have otherwise been. I have in mind here the delayed and gradual price and exchange rate liberalization; the lack of de-monopolization of many horizontally-integrated industrial organizations, which continued to run as they did do under the centrally planned economy; the delayed dissolution of the ruble area; and the Russian Central Bank’s inability to control money supply in 1991-1993.
To be fair to Gaidar and his team, they were well aware of many of these challenges from the very beginning. The problem was that they faced serious political constraints that limited their room for manoeuvre. The political economy of market reforms was much more complicated in Russia than it was in the Baltic states, Czech Republic or Poland. Moreover, ex post facto critique – done with the benefit of hindsight – is always easier than projecting radical policy steps – through unchartered waters – ex ante. The fact remains that none of Gaidar’s critics in the early nineties were able to present a better alternative. They presented populist wishful thinking rather than a consistent and operational blueprint that would have allowed Russia to overcome its dramatic 89-91 collapse....
Read entire article at openDemocracy
The sudden death of Yegor Gaidar on December 16, 2009 came as surprise to many of his friends, myself included, well aware though I was of his serious health problems. Over some twenty years, I was fortunate to collaborate with Yegor very closely: before he came to government; when, in late 1991, he became the Deputy, and then Acting Prime Minister; and when he came back to academia. I knew Yegor the policymaker, Yegor the politician, Yegor the academic, and, most importantly, Yegor the human being.
An awful lot of words have already been devoted to his role in initiating and carrying out the critical phase of Russia’s economic transition in 1992-1993. Some questions are simply destined to remain unanswered. Such as how complete and consistent the original “Gaidar program” was. Why some of its intended effects – macroeconomic stabilisation and growth – only came about with a big delay. Whether the economic and social cost could have been smaller. And what the team of “young reformers”, led by Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, would have done had they entered the same river again.
I have already on a few occasions expressed my opinion about the serious mistakes that were made in the last years of the Soviet Union and early years of the new Russia. These were mistakes that made the economic transition longer and probably more painful than it could have otherwise been. I have in mind here the delayed and gradual price and exchange rate liberalization; the lack of de-monopolization of many horizontally-integrated industrial organizations, which continued to run as they did do under the centrally planned economy; the delayed dissolution of the ruble area; and the Russian Central Bank’s inability to control money supply in 1991-1993.
To be fair to Gaidar and his team, they were well aware of many of these challenges from the very beginning. The problem was that they faced serious political constraints that limited their room for manoeuvre. The political economy of market reforms was much more complicated in Russia than it was in the Baltic states, Czech Republic or Poland. Moreover, ex post facto critique – done with the benefit of hindsight – is always easier than projecting radical policy steps – through unchartered waters – ex ante. The fact remains that none of Gaidar’s critics in the early nineties were able to present a better alternative. They presented populist wishful thinking rather than a consistent and operational blueprint that would have allowed Russia to overcome its dramatic 89-91 collapse....