THE year just past opened with Russia’s most highly touted reformer, Anatoly Chubais, on the top of the Kremlin heap. He was given unprecedented power over his country’s economic policy by President Boris Yeltsin through concurrent appointments as first deputy prime minister and finance minister after Yeltsin’s recovery from quintuple bypass surgery. Although Chubais was widely acknowledged as Russia’s most hated public official, even his bitter opponents praised his intelligence and effectiveness. Few attacked his integrity.
The year just starting may be quite different for Chubais. His reputation is now in tatters after a series of scandals that call into question the fundamental nature of the post-Soviet Russian reform. Has it been a true free-market opening, or a way for banking, industrial, and governmental elites—perhaps including Chubais himself—to grow rich at the people’s expense? Even Chubais’s loyal defender and fellow young reformer, First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, has said that Chubais is capable of “great stupidity.” The recent revelations are indeed a stark demonstration of the taint of impropriety surrounding even the most “radical” reformers in Yeltsin’s government.
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