Scholarly Paper aus dem Jahr 2007 im Fachbereich Politik Int. Politik Region Russland Lnder der ehemal. Sowjetunion einseitig bedruckt Note AYork University 13... » 

Scholarly Paper aus dem Jahr 2007 im Fachbereich Politik Int. Politik Region Russland Lnder der ehemal. Sowjetunion einseitig bedruckt Note AYork University 13 Eintragungen im Literaturverzeichnis Sprache EnglischAbstract Fragmentation of state authority lack of a clear legislative baseunreliability of the legal system collapse of the industry bisection of theGDP runaway inflation capital flight rises in crime and corruptiontremendous decline in life expectancy the political economic and socialresults of Russias transition from plan to market under Yeltsin aredevastating. Within a few years the mighty Soviet Union fell back from amajor power to a third world economy dealing with problems like mass povertyand epidemics. In light of these disastrous outcomes the question of what wentright during the transition process seems to be even more appropriate then thequestion of what went wrong. However while it seems to be obvious that thestabilization and liberalization attempts by the Russian governmentpredominantly failed privatization the third core facet of transition1 hasbeen touted as a one of the major successes of the Russian governmentseconomic transformation policy. By the beginning of 1996 77.2 of mediumsizeand large enterprises had been privatised accounting for 88.3 of totalindustrial output.2 On the one hand according to the Russian governmentsWestern advisers this privatization is the fastest in human history and seemsto be one of the few positive fruit of Russian economic policy since 19913. Onthe other hand a common point of view is that its implementation led to anunfair distribution of state assets and only benefited a minority of Russianpopulation. This debate is going to be the main focus of this paper. Bydiscussing the general importance of the private sector to a democracy theaims of privatization its subsequent reforms and its results I intend toassess the contribution of these reforms to the process of Russiandemocratization. «