Lost Opportunity

Foreign Affairs

A lively and highly readable account.

New York Times Book Review

[Goldman] draw[s] on his vast knowledge to provide some insights into why reform is so difficult in the Russian context and why some of the efforts of recent years have gone awry.— Barry Bosworth

Publishers Weekly

In a compelling, meticulous analysis of Boris Yeltsin's unsuccessful attempt to find a workable blueprint for economic reform, Wellesley economics professor Goldman focuses on the Russian leader's abortive ``shock therapy,'' meant to shake up a centrally planned, monolithic system. The methods, which Yeltsin learned from economist Yegor Gaidar, whom he appointed acting prime minister in 1992, included decontrol of consumer prices and cuts in subsidies to farms and factories. Shock therapy was doomed to failure, Goldman argues, because there were no corresponding reforms in monopolized industry or the service sector, there was no dormant market infrastructure to be jolted into action, and the private sphere opened up by Mikhail Gorbachev had come under the control of a Russian mafia. Associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, Goldman offers instructive comparisons between the Soviet experiment and more gradual, effective reforms in Germany, Japan, Poland and China. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Goldman (What Went Wrong with Perestroika?, LJ 10/15/91) ventures into an intensive examination of the economic consequences of the events that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. He starts with a summary of the events leading to the fall of Gorbachev and the rise of Yeltsin. The reform process, he asserts, has been troubled from the beginning because of bad decisions based on erroneous economic theories. A revealing quote: "Gorbachev never understood that the purpose of economic reform should be to make people's lives better." Charts cover money supply, economic plans proposed and rejected by Gorbachev, and economic conditions prior to reform. This is a well-written, thoroughly researched examination of the failure of economic reforms in Russia, written by a true expert in the field. It compliments recent works such as Lynn D. Nelson's Property to the People (M.E. Sharpe, 1993). Essential for all business, economics, and international studies collections.-Lisa K. Miller, Paradise Valley Community Coll. Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.

Gilbert Taylor

In "What Went Wrong with Perestroika" , Wellesley College economics professor Goldman explained how Gorbachev temporized his way to oblivion. When Yeltsin came to the fore, the new boss boosted wholesale privatization whole hog, the story of which the author tacks down with his customary acuity and insight. "Shock therapy," essentially the brainchild of Yegor Gaidar, the young theoretical economist whom Yeltsin elevated to the prime ministership in 1992, lived up to its meaning and blew a cold blast of uncontrolled prices and a worthless ruble through the depressed economy. The "lost opportunity" of the title is found, according to Goldman's analysis, in Gaidar's pulling on macroeconomic monetary levers, hoping that trade, services, and agriculture would establish themselves in an unsubsidized world. Their failure to do so yet leads the author into a comparison of Russia with countries (Poland, Hungary, and China) that have rid themselves of the command economy more than Russia has. More descriptive than prescriptive, this summary of the past two years should interest all those following Russian capitalism aborning.