Lost Opportunity: What Has Made Economic Reform in Russia So Difficult?

by Marshall I. Goldman

Overview

A lucid analysis of Russia's titanic struggle to change from a centrally planned economy to a market economy.

Combining trenchant commentary with first-person reporting, Marshall I. Goldman provides the clearest picture yet of how Boris Yeltsin took on the task of reforming the Russian economy and what happened along the way. Goldman has added a new chapter for the paperback edition on recent developments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393314854
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/17/1996
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Marshall I. Goldman (1930—2017) was associate director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University and the author of several books on the Soviet Union and comparative economic systems.

Editorial Reviews

"[Goldman] draw[s] on his vast knowledge to provide some insights into why reform is so difficult in the Russian context and why some of the efforts of recent years have gone awry. "

Barry Bosworth

In a compelling, meticulous analysis of Boris Yeltsin's unsuccessful attempt to find a workable blueprint for economic reform, Wellesley economics professor Goldman focuses on the Russian leader's abortive ``shock therapy,'' meant to shake up a centrally planned, monolithic system. The methods, which Yeltsin learned from economist Yegor Gaidar, whom he appointed acting prime minister in 1992, included decontrol of consumer prices and cuts in subsidies to farms and factories. Shock therapy was doomed to failure, Goldman argues, because there were no corresponding reforms in monopolized industry or the service sector, there was no dormant market infrastructure to be jolted into action, and the private sphere opened up by Mikhail Gorbachev had come under the control of a Russian mafia. Associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, Goldman offers instructive comparisons between the Soviet experiment and more gradual, effective reforms in Germany, Japan, Poland and China. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Goldman (What Went Wrong with Perestroika?, LJ 10/15/91) ventures into an intensive examination of the economic consequences of the events that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. He starts with a summary of the events leading to the fall of Gorbachev and the rise of Yeltsin. The reform process, he asserts, has been troubled from the beginning because of bad decisions based on erroneous economic theories. A revealing quote: "Gorbachev never understood that the purpose of economic reform should be to make people's lives better." Charts cover money supply, economic plans proposed and rejected by Gorbachev, and economic conditions prior to reform. This is a well-written, thoroughly researched examination of the failure of economic reforms in Russia, written by a true expert in the field. It compliments recent works such as Lynn D. Nelson's Property to the People (M.E. Sharpe, 1993). Essential for all business, economics, and international studies collections.-Lisa K. Miller, Paradise Valley Community Coll. Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.

Library Journal

"A lively and highly readable account."

Foreign Affairs