Economic Reform in Russia: The Political Economy of Gaidarnomics

The early study of economic reform ín Russia, which was characterized by price liberalization, radical privatization, and forceful stabilization, was studied mainly with an economic perspective. This paper which was based on political economy, investigated economic reform that the ex-Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar had initiated. Gaidarnomics, the Russian neoliberalism, has character which transforms activity of economic agents in non-economic system into market-oriented activity through strong shock (introduction of market) from the outside. In order to realize this shock therapy, a strong authoritarian regime or corporative democratic government is needed. But as the civil society is immature in Russia and the Russian government has no effective methods such efficient bureaucratic and state instrument to perform structural reform, and also because of Boris Yeltsins populist stances. Russia has not thoroughly performed radical economic reform. When we study the changed process of economic reform, Yeltsin supported Gaidars radical reform but moderate-conservatives supported macro-economic populism. Concerning the political stage of economic reform, Russia cabinet was composed of the political influence of reformÏst and conservative groups. This paper was to analyze Gaidarnomics, which was performed relatively purely by the first stage and the second stage, and in the third stage was compromised by moderate-conservatives. But at last after the election of Duma in January 1994 the initiative of economic reform was passed onto moderate-conservatives, and the Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin has initiated selective structural reform, which is intended to fortify the industry production