Russian Retrospectives on Reforms from Yeltsin to Putin.

The article focuses on the history of economic reforms in Russia. The Soviet Union officially divided into separate states in December 1991, and in January 1992, Boris Yeltsin assumed charge as the first president of the Russian Federation, One of Yeltsin's primary goals was to end the planned Communist economy--not to reform it, but to finish it. Yeltsin's reformers clearly achieved their goal of ending economic management in the style of Soviet Communism before they went up in flames. In only a few years, Russia's firms were no longer state-owned, its people could own property and firms, its government relied on taxes for collecting revenue, and its currency was traded on foreign exchange markets. The key policy choices aimed at ending the Communist policies of economic planning were well known: decontrolling prices from their administered levels; slashing the inordinately high budget deficit; privatizing the state-owned means of production; and opening the economy via foreign trade and capital account liberalization under a unified, market-determined ruble.