![]() ![]() ![]() Gorbachev feared economic liberalisation, and once it happened under Yeltsin, it quickly turned into a money-grabbing exercise. “Once the country had freedom of speech, sausages and clothes would follow and Russia would miraculously turn into a nice-smelling western-style country.” ![]() Thankfully Arkady Ostrovsky devotes more time to his journey through this period, focusing as much on social change as on the political or economic: “Under the slogans of democracy and glasnost, people all too often meant ‘clothes and sausages’,” he writes. Disillusionment produced Vladimir Putin, authoritarianism and the renationalisation of dodgy money. Cue Boris Yeltsin, unprecedented freedom for most, chaos and penury for many – and untold wealth for a small group of party officials and assorted chancers. Instead of improving the system, however, as the Soviet leader had hoped, the changes killed it. I was fortunate, as the Daily Telegraph’s Moscow bureau chief, to see the birth pangs of Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic reforms (perestroika) and limited freedom of expression (glasnost). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |