"Strange People" in the Politburo: Institutional Problems and the Human Factor in the Economic Collapse of the Soviet Empire (Critical Essay‪)‬

Egor Gaidar, Gibel' imperii: Uroki imperii dlia sovremennoi Rossii [Collapse of an Empire: Lessons of the Empire for Modern Russia]. 448 pp. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006. ISBN 5824307598. To the chagrin of Egor Gaidar's many admirers among the liberal intelligentsia, the former premier is not at all popular in today's Russia (as they say in Moscow, "beyond the Garden Ring"). In fact, the party that he led until 2004, called Russia's Democratic Choice from 1993 to 2001 and then the Union of Right Forces, consecutively lost every election, both when it was actually in power (1993) and, especially, when it was in opposition. The reputation of the "father of shock therapy," who "robbed" many Sberbank customers, remains amazingly resilient, even as many heroes and anti-heroes of the first years of independent Russia have long ago been totally forgotten. (1)