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

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.)