Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-1992, and theend of the centrally controlled “command economy,” anew class of wealthy private capitalists with close governmentconnections has emerged in Russia. The new ruling clique thathas replaced the Soviet-era “nomenklatura” is widelyreferred to by the American-origin term “istablishment.”
At the same time, life for most Russians has not improved.The great majority still struggles to survive, sometimes belowthe subsistence level. Industrial and agricultural productionhave fallen 50 percent in recent years, and millions are not paidtheir paltry salaries on time. Because most people lack hard currencyto buy anything but essentials, consumer goods are generally accessibleonly to successful speculators, the mafia, and higher governmentofficials. For the average Russian, and especially the elderly,life is not just impoverished, it is becoming desperate. [See:"Nationalist Sentiment Widespread, Growing in Former SovietUnion," Sept.-Oct. 1995 Journal, pp. 8-10.]
Russians pin much of the blame for this catastrophe on theineffectual government of President Boris Yeltsin and his PrimeMinister, Viktor Chernomyrdin. In a public statement issued lastDecember, a group of prominent Russian intellectuals spoke outon the crisis in their homeland:
The catastrophe has run its course. The economic policy ofYeltsin’s and Chernomyrdin’s aides has made a small section ofthe former communist nomenklatura and of the “new Russians“unbelievably rich, plunged most of the nation’s industry intoparalysis, and reduced the majority of the population to poverty.As far as property ownership is concerned, the gap between therich and poor is much deeper now than that which led to the [1917]October [Bolshevik] Revolution.
