Shock Therapy

Abstract

January 2012 marked the twentieth anniversary of the actual start of radical market reforms in Russia. The anniversary fell during times of social and political turbulence in the country that were caused by the parlimentary election and the presidential race, which pushed the anniversary into the shadow of new events. Neither the mainstream press nor academic circles paid much attention to it or tried to match the initial key reformist ideas with the main actual outcomes. But, from the developmental point of view, have we drawn the right conclusions from the transition experience in the past two decades?