Volume 49, Number 10 · June 13, 2002
Big Money in the New Russia
By Robert Cottrell
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
by David E. Hoffman
Public Affairs, 567 pp., $30.00
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000
by Stephen Kotkin
Oxford University Press, 245 pp., $25.00
Say what you like about Russia in the 1990s, at least it was never boring. Anything was possible, and, indeed, most things happened. Laws and institutions crumbled before an onrush of greed and desperation. As David Hoffman and Stephen Kotkin recount, the events of the period included hyperinflation, a financial boom, a catastrophic bust, the looting of national wealth through privatization, a civil war, the unseating of four prime ministers in eighteen months, a president at death's door, and the shelling of a parliament.
Review, 4296 words
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