Boris Yeltsin - lest we forget his crimes

Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist at the World Bank, had this to say about Yeltsin in his book Globalization and its discontents:

[I]n Russia, President Yeltsin, with enormously greater powers than his counterparts in any Western democracy, was encouraged to circumvent the democratically elected Duma (parliament) and to enact market reforms by decree... the government, pressured by the United States, the World Bank and the IMF to privatise rapidly, had turned over its State assets for a pittance...

Privatization, accompanied by the opening of the capital markets, led not to wealth creation but to asset-stripping. It was perfectly logical. An oligarch who has just been able to use political influence to garner assets worth billions, after paying only a pittance, would naturally want to get his money out of the country. Keeping money in Russia meant investing it in a country in deep depression, and risking not only low returns but having the assets seized by the next government, which would inevitably complain, quite rightly, about the "illegitimacy" of the privatization process. Anyone smart enough to be a winner in the privatization sweepstakes would be smart enough to put their money in the booming US stock market, or into the safe haven of secretive offshore bank accounts. It was not even a close call; and not surprisingly, billions poured out of the country…

Those who benefited from the largesse of the state, or more accurately from Yeltsin’s largesse, worked hard to ensure Yeltsin’s reelection.

More on Yeltsin's disastrous legacy from The Guardian here. For a bit more detail on Russia's post-Soviet era finanicial crisis under Yeltsin's stewardship read this excellent piece from Eric Toussant. I particularly like the section where he quotes the Financial Times's response to the oligarchs' takeover of Russia's assets (which caused Russia's economy to go into free fall):

At the root of the problem is Russia’s flawed privatisation process. Because the division of the spoils was so chaotic - and so profoundly unjust - Russia’s rulers will always have a powerful weapon to use against its capitalists. Ultimately, there are only two ways to end this standoff: grant an official amnesty, at least for the oligarchs’ economic crimes, or take their property away. It is a choice between accepting gross inequality and imposing yet another revolution. Neither option is appealing. But having tried the latter in 1917, Russia might find it safer this time to find a way to live with its unsavoury oligarchs" (FT 21 July 2003).