This is a part of the interview I gave on Friday to Channel
1 on their request for Sunday night news on the 20th anniversary
of privatization in Russia. The channel did not show it It
is a pity, as the topic is important and the fruits of this
ill-conceived privatization have been still affecting our
living.
Here comes the answer to the journalists question whether
there was any alternative privatization program.
Yes, there was another programme which I developed. This programme
envisaged that all the money accumulated by people in the
Soviet period had to be used for purchasing of assets. At
that time money in the hands of the population amounted to
about 10 trillion roubles, [this was money] in different forms
including populations savings in the Savings Bank that, according
to conservative estimates, amounted to approximately 315 billion
roubles. According to the dollar/rouble rate of 2007, the
savings, and not only those kept in the Savings Bank, but
all kinds of savings, including the State Insurance Bonds
and securities, reached, according to the recent estimates,
about 350 - 380 billion roubles. This is what had been cumulated
throughout the Soviet period.
My programme implied that the money should be spent on the
purchase of, as it was called then, the "means of production"
or, as it is today called, the assets. Then there was a very
large imbalance between the amount of money in hands and the
commodity weight. In fact, the commodity weight reached only
14 kopeks per a rouble of savings. This means that a person
intending to spend a rouble could find goods only for 14 kopeks.
However, if our privatization programme had been implemented,
then hairdressers, small shops, trucks, that is, all what
constituted small and medium privatization could have added
to the traditional goods (such as suits, sausage, or whatever
was sold in the Soviet Union then).
First, a middle class would have emerged. Second, no one
would have felt cheated. Third, people would have cherished
it, because they bought it for their own money, and what could
be also important, their parents savings or even savings
of previous generations would not have been wasted or lost.
are not lost to their parents, and even earlier generations.
But different programme with the so-called privatization
vouchers was adopted instead, and it was virtually a deceit,
the most banal deceit. However, it was a large-scale deceit,
unprecedented in history, as 150 million people were simply
caught up in a shell game.
