Vol. 14 No. 10 · 28 May 1992
pages 9-11 | 5855 words
Comrades in Monetarism
John Lloyd writes about the Russia over which Yegor Gaidar and his team preside
Why is it so important for the rich states of the world that Russia and the other post-Communist states become capitalist democracies? Why are rich foreign countries so determined to lavish resources, generally perceived as scarce, on a country whose standard of living, though declining, is still much higher than that of most of the Third World?
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 14 No. 13 · 9 July 1992
From Henry Jebb
John Lloyd (LRB, 24 May) writes that one of the main reasons men such as Pavlov, the Prime Minister, and Victor Gerashchenko, chairman of the State Bank, threw in their lot with the anti-Gorbachev putsch was that they were desperate for money. Liberalisation and deregulation of the Soviet economy had emptied the bank vaults of all available cash; how the Gorbachev reforms could be sustained was seemingly beyond comprehension.
In a Financial Times interview, published the day the putsch began, Gerashchenko announced that he had recently struck a deal with Salomon Brothers, the New York merchant bank run by John Gutfreund. Salomon Brothers, perhaps more than any other finance house in the United States, had come to represent the grotesque excesses of deregulated, ‘liberalised’ America, and Gutfreund to symbolise personal greed.
After the coup, Gerashchenko went to jail, the deal between Salomon Brothers and the State Bank was torn up, and a fortnight later John Gutfreund was fired for illegal dealing in US securities. There were many desperate men around last August, but it is important to remember they were not all Russian.
Henry Jebb
New York
