Privatization and Transition in Russia in the Early 1990s

1   Privatization and the Russian transition

Perspectives

The Russian Mass Privatization Programme (MPP) of 1992–94¹ was the largest single privatization project ever undertaken, in terms of the number of companies and employees it affected. More important, it created the foundation of a market economy in Russia.

This chapter aims, first, to provide a brief background for our history of decision making in the early 1990s. We place that decision making in the context of the economic inheritance of Russia – the political, legal and constitutional mêlée within which reform was introduced, including the attempted coup in August 1991 and parliamentary opposition in September 1993. As Appel (2004: 179) cautions in her comparison of privatization in ...