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negotiated settlement that ended the war did not resolve Chechnya’s sovereign
status, an ambiguity that would later help to spark a second war (discussed
below).
Founding elections: 1993–6
In addition to the constitutional referendum, Yeltsin also decreed that elec-
tions for the State Duma and the Federation Council would take place on
12 December 1993. These new parliamentarians were to serve only an interim
two-year term, and then face election again in 1995 for a full four-year term.
Earlier in the year, Yeltsin had pledged to hold early elections for the presidency.
After the October 1993 events, he withdrew that pledge and instead scheduled
the next presidential election for 1996. After two years of no elections in post-
Communist Russia, this electoral calendar offered voters a chance to choose
their national leaders three times in as many years.
Between June 1991 – the timing of the last national election in Soviet Russia –
and December 1993 when the first set of competitive elections in the post-Soviet
era were held, monumental changes unfolded in Russia, making predictions
about electoral outcomes difficult. During this interval, the Russian econ-
omy as well as the Russian state had continued to contract, while political
polarisation had generated instability and then outright military confronta-
tion. Voter turn-out in December 1993, reported officially at 54.8 per cent, was
markedly lower than any previous competitive elections in Russia in 1989, 1990
and 1991.
Some outcomes from 1993 went according to the Yeltsin administration’s
plan. In the referendum, the official count claimed that 58.4 per cent supported
Yeltsin’s constitution, while 41.2 per cent opposed it. Elections to the upper
house, the Federation Council, and elections in single-mandate districts for the
Duma were unremarkable, producing pro-Yeltsin victories in most contexts.
The one extraordinary electoral outcome in 1993 occurred on the proportional
representation ballot for the Duma. Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his extreme
nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) won almost a quarter
of the popular vote. At the same time, the pro-Yeltsin Russia’s Choice secured
a paltry 15 per cent, less than half of what was expected, while the other
‘democratic’ parties all won less than 10 per cent of the popular vote. The
Communist Party of the Russian Federation and their allies, the Agrarian
Party of Russia, won less than 20 per cent of the vote, while new ‘centrist’
groups combined for nearly a quarter of the vote.
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Zhirinovsky’s splash onto the Russian national stage shocked governmen-
tal officials in both Moscow and the West.
35
Because he spouted a venomous
brand of racism and chauvinism and criticised in equal proportion the Com-
munists and democrats, Zhirinovsky appeared to represent a new, third force in
Russianelectoral politics – militant nationalism. Russian fascism seemed ascen-
dant, whilebothpro-democratic (and pro-Western) forcesand pro-Communist
forces seemed to be on the decline.
36
At this moment, Russia’s political and
economic future seemed highly uncertain. Public opinion surveys indicated
a rise in the degree of trust in the fairness of the electoral process.
37
At the
same time, pro-Yeltsin elites in Moscow hinted that the Kremlin would never
allow someone like Zhirinovsky to come to power, no matter what the voters
said, suggesting that the elections were not the final determinant of who ruled
Russia.
With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that Zhirinovsky’s 1993 victory
did not mark the beginning of fascism’s ascendance in Russia. Rather it was
the unique circumstances of the autumn of 1993 that allowed his star to rise.
After two and a half years of falling production, double-digit inflation and
general economic uncertainty, everyone expected the opposition or protest
vote in 1993 to be substantial. In the immediate aftermath of this mini-civil
war in downtown Moscow, the Communists were still regrouping in Decem-
ber. Weeks before the December vote, it was uncertain whether members of
the Russian Communist Party would even be allowed to participate. Com-
munist disarray allowed Zhirinovsky to capture the opposition, protest vote.
In addition, Zhirinovsky’s brilliant television campaign, the first real mass-
media campaign in Russian electoral history, established his party as the most
aggressive and abrasive enemy of the status quo.
38
Over the next years leading up to the next parliamentary election in 1995,
economic conditions in Russia did not improve, leaving the distribution of
35 In the wake of the election, the Journal of Democracy commissioned several articles from
Russian and American scholars and practitioners. The editors gave the cluster of articles
the title, ‘Is Russian Democracy Doomed?’ See Journal of Democracy 5, 2 (Apr. 1994): 3–41.
36 For a flavour of his views at the time, see Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Poslednii brosok na iug
(Moscow: TOO Pisatel’, 1993).
37 Matthew Wyman, Stephen White, Bill Miller and Paul Heywood, ‘Public Opinion,
Parties, and Voters in the 1993 Russian Elections’, Europe–Asia Studies 47 (1995): 602.
38 The importance of the PR electoral system cannot be underestimated in accounting for
Zhirinovsky’s surprising victory. In single-mandate races, LDPR candidates won only
five seats in the Duma and no seats in the Federation Council. In a pure majoritarian
electoral system, the Liberal Democratic Party would have won less than ten seats in
the parliament.
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support between pro-government and opposition voters relatively the same. In
this two-year interval, however, Zhirinovsky’s appeal among opposition voters
faded at the same time as the Communist Party reorganised and grew once
again as Russia’s most important opposition force. Although the Communist
Party was challenged by important splinter groups on the Left, including
Viktor Anpilov’s radical Working Russia, the party entered the 1995 campaign
as the most united and best organised political party in Russia. Building upon
networks and structures left from several decades of Communist Party rule
in Russia, the CPRF used the resources accorded to the party by the Duma to
strengthen regional party organisations during the two-year interval between
parliamentary votes.
This organisational work paid off as the CPRF made impressive gains over
its 1993 showing by winning almost a quarter of the popular vote and thereby
reclaiming its role as the leader of the opposition. Buoyed by party identifi-
cation on the ballot, CPRF candidates also dominated single-mandate races,
winning an astonishing fifty-eight seats. Zhirinovsky’s LDPR won less than
half its 1993 total, but was still placed second with 11 per cent of the popular
vote. The total percentage of votes for anti-governmental parties well exceeded
50 per cent, giving hope to the opposition, CPRF leader Ziuganov in particu-
lar, that Yeltsin could be defeated in the presidential context in the following
year.
Division and poor electoral performances among those considered pro-
government or pro-reform helped to fuel optimism in the opposition’s camp.
The number of electoral blocs that registered for the ballot rose dramatically,
from thirteen in 1993 to forty-three in 1995 and most of the new contestants
were considered reformist or centrist blocs. Eight of the new electoral blocs in
1995 were direct descendants of Russia’s Choice from 1993, while an amazing
twenty electoral blocs emerged from the Democratic Russia of 1991. Early in
the campaign period, the Yeltsin administration openly promoted the forma-
tion of two new electoral blocs led by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
and Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin that would be loyal to the Yeltsin regime.
Chernomyrdin’s Our Home Is Russia was supposed to represent the Right of
centre, while Rybkin was ordered to form a left-of-centre bloc. The Rybkin
project all but collapsed before the vote, but even Chernomyrdin’s new ‘party
of power’ did not perform well, just barely breaking into double digits. Grigorii
Iavlinskii’s Iabloko (Apple), the self-proclaimed leader of Russia’s democratic
opposition, won 7 per cent, well below expectations and almost a full per-
centage point below Iabloko’s 1993 showing. Former acting prime minister
Egor Gaidar and his Democratic Choice of Russia (DVR) suffered the greatest
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setback in 1995, winning just 3.9 per cent of the popular vote, less than one-third
of their 1993 total.
Most analysts interpreted these results as a firm rebuff of both Yeltsin and
Prime Minister Chernomyrdin.
39
Yeltsin subsequently began the 1996 presiden-
tial campaign looking as if he would follow other first time post-Communist
leaders and be defeated in the second election. To defeat Ziuganov and stay
in power a second term, Yeltsin turned the 1996 presidential election into a
referendum on the revolution.
40
Yeltsin obviously could not ask voters to judge
him by the achievements of his administration over the previous four years – a
list of accomplishments that included economic collapse, armed conflict with
parliament and war in Chechnya (discussed above and below). Instead Yeltsin’s
strategy was to convince voters that Russia had to proceed with what he and his
allies had started in 1991 – the transformation of Russia into a market economy
and democratic polity. In making this case, Yeltsin’s campaign also emphasised
that the current president was the lesser of two evils. The Yeltsin campaign
also scared voters into thinking that revolutionary turmoil would ensue should
Ziuganov win. To make it easier for voters to support Yeltsin, his campaign first
worked to eliminate or mute the president’s negatives. First, Yeltsin’s image
had to be changed. The president lost twenty pounds, stopped drinking and
began to appear frequently in public again. Second, negative policies had to
be changed. Public opinion polls demonstrated that two were most salient –
unpaid wages and the war in Chechnya. To create a sense of urgency around
the issue, Yeltsin created a special government commission tasked with pay-
ing all salaries by 1 April. In the process of fulfilling this goal, Yeltsin sacked
numerous regional government heads as well as several of his own cabinet
officials including his deputy prime minister, Anatolii Chubais. Yeltsin also
raised pensions, increased salaries of government employees (including mili-
tary personnel), and began doling out government transfers on the campaign
trail. Yeltsin addressed his other big negative at the end of March when he
pledged to end the war in Chechnya. In May, the first Russian troops began to
leave.
Parallel to this positive campaign to remake Yeltsin’s image, policies and
government, Yeltsin’s team also unleashed a hard-hitting negative media blitz
39 Peter Reddaway, ‘Red Alert’, The New Republic, 29 Jan. 1996,p.15; Daniel Singer, ‘The
Burden of Boris’, The Nation, 1 Apr. 1996,p.23; and Jerry Hough, Evelyn Davidheiser,
Susan Goodrich Lehmann, The 1996 Russian Presidential Election (Washington: Brookings
Institution Press, 1996).
40 The following two paragraphs are adapted from Michael McFaul, Russia’s 1 996 Presi-
dential Election: The End of Polarized Politics (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press,
1997).
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against Communism at the end of the campaign. The Yeltsin campaign suc-
cessfully defined the election as a referendum on seventy years of Soviet Com-
munism, and deftly avoided letting the vote be about Yeltsin’s record. Ziuganov
tried to bring the focus back to Yeltsin’s record, but did not succeed, in part
because he enjoyed little access to the national media and in part because
he offered no viable alternative to Yeltsin’s reforms. Instead of tracking to
the centre and becoming a Social Democrat, Ziuganov fused his traditional
Communist slogans with nationalist themes. The strategy did not attract new
voters. Instead, the campaign became defined by the mass media (virtually
monopolised by Yeltsin), as a contest not betweentwo individuals,but between
two ways of life.
By 1996 Russia had in place a political system that no longer seemed on
the verge of collapse or overthrow. The 1996 vote reaffirmed that elections
were the only legitimate means for obtaining political power. At one critical
moment in the spring campaign, Yeltsin seemed ready to postpone the vote,
ban the Communist Party and rule by decree.
41
But he did not. In surviving this
important milestone, Russia’s constitution also seemed to be strengthening.
Moreover, those elected under the guise of this new law also seemed to be
acquiescing to the new political rules. Though the Duma had been dominated
by anti-Yeltsin forces between 1994 and 1996, the relationship between the new
parliament and president survived new elections for the parliament in 1993 and
1995, votes of no confidence in the government during the summer of 1995,
a presidential election in 1996 and the subsequent legislative approval of the
prime minister soon thereafter. Co-operation between these two branches
was becoming routinised and rules-based.
A return of the Communists also faded as a threat after the 1996 vote.
Whether President Ziuganov actually would have tried to resurrect a com-
mand economy is a hypothetical question. That he would not have the chance
to try ever again seemed certain after the 1996 vote. Instead, prospects for deep-
ening market reforms seemed better than ever. The following year, Russian
government officials as well as several Western financial institutions predicted
positive growth rates for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 1997, Yeltsin also reorganised his government to empower a group of young
reformers.
42
He made an even bolder reconfiguration of the government in the
41 Lilia Shevtsova,‘El’tsin ostanetsya, dazhe esli proigraet’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 Apr.
1996,p.3. Yeltsin admits that he contemplated such a plan, but then rejected it. See Boris
Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), pp. 24–5.
42 Yeltsin appointed Chubais deputy prime minister in charge of the economy, including the
Finance Ministry, and named Boris Nemtsov, a young reformist from Nizhnii Novgorod
and a darling of Western aid programmes, as another deputy prime minister.
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spring of 1998 when he dismissed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and
appointed an even younger, and more reformist government headed by Sergei
Kirienko. Called a reformer’s ‘dream team’ by many Russian and Western
commentators, the new government came into office with an express desire
to finally truly reform Russia’s ailing economy.
There was some good economic news. Annual inflation dropped to 22 per
cent in 1996 and 11 per cent in 1997, while the exchange rate on the rouble
remained relatively stable. In 1997, Russia finally did record positive growth –
albeit very small growth – for the first time in the decade.
43
That same year,
Russia’s new stock market boomed, helping in part to fuel upbeat forecasts
about Russia’s economic future.
44
Beneath the surface, however, the Russian polity and economy still had
many ills. On the political side, it was actual illness – Yeltsin’s illness – that
crippled the president’s second term from the outset. Yeltsin spent the first
months of his second term recovering from multiple-bypass heart surgery.
After a brief appearance in the Kremlin in December, Yeltsin finally returned
to active duty as president in the spring of 1997. Throughout his entire second
term, however, Yeltsin never seemed fully engaged. As a result, a small group
of Yeltsin confidants – called the Yeltsin ‘family’ – seemed to rule Russia from
inside the Kremlin. This family – which included Yeltsin’s daughter – wielded
power by working closely with Russia’s oligarchs, and one – Boris Berezovsky –
in particular.
45
The August 1998 financial crisis
In addition to a crisis in leadership, the negative consequences of Russia’s par-
tial economic reform were beginning to accumulate in the second half of the
1990s. Shock therapy in Russia failed because it was never attempted. Instead,
throughout most of the 1990s, Yeltsin allowed Chernomyrdin and his govern-
ment to creep along with partial reforms – reforms that included big budget
deficits, insider privatisation and partial price and trade liberalisation, which in
turn combined to create amazing opportunities for corruption and spawned a
decade of oligarchic capitalism. The nadir of this period was loans-for-shares,
43 Daniel Treisman, ‘Fighting Inflation in a Transitional Regime: Russia’s Anomalous
Stabilization’, World Politics 50 (1998): 235–65.
44 See most famously, Richard Layard and John Parker, The Coming Russian Boom: A Guide
to New Markets and Politics (New York: Free Press, 1996).
45 On this period, see David Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
(New York: Public Affairs, 2002); and Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild
Ride from Communism to Capitalism (New York: Crown Publishers, 2000).
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a scheme under which Yeltsin and his government gave away Russia’s most
valuable companies to these oligarchs for a song.
After the ratification of the constitution in 1993, the Russian government
did acquire control over Russia’s Central Bank and thereafter pursued a more
stringent monetary policy. But budget deficits persisted throughout the 1990s,
as the government continued to fail to pass balanced budgets through the
parliament.
46
Last-minute deals needed to pass the budget, particularly with
the Agrarian Party, consistently resulted in the proliferation of financial obli-
gations that the government could never meet, which in turn necessitated the
constant sequestering of expenditures. Persistently poor tax collection also
undermined sound fiscal policy. Russia’s oligarchs were particularly notorious
for not paying taxes, creating real revenue-raising problems for the govern-
ment. In 1998, the deficit was still 150 billion roubles ($25 billion) – more than
5 per cent of GDP.
In the early part of the decade, the Central Bank simply printed new money
and issued new credits to compensate for the deficit, a policy that fuelled
inflation and undermined the stability of the exchange rate. In the latter half
of the decade, after the enactment of the constitution gave the executive
branch control over the Central Bank, the government deployed a new set of
non-inflationary methods to deal with the deficit.
First, the Central Bank stopped printing money. The lack of liquidity in the
economy also stimulated the use of barter, a highly inefficient method of trans-
action.
47
By 1998, experts estimated that over half of all industry transactions
took place through barter. In addition, tight monetary policy exacerbated the
accumulation of debt between enterprises. According to one estimate, inter-
enterprise debts increased from 33.9 per cent of GDP in 1993 to 54.2 per cent
of GDP by the end of 1997.
48
A second method was simply not to pay money owed to state employees.
This strategy resulted in an explosion of wage and pension arrears. Because
workers and pensioners were not organised collectively to protest against the
state’s nefarious behaviour, the Russian government could get away with this
method of ‘macroeconomic stabilisation’.
49
46 Sergei Aleksashenko, Bitva za rubl’ (Moscow: AlmaMater, 1999).
47 See David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1999); and Vadim Medvedev, Obshchii krizis ekonomiki: prichini
i posledstviia (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond sotsial’no-ekonomicheskih isledovanii
[Gorbachev-fond], 1999), esp. pp. 94–8.
48 Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1997), p. 535.
49 See Debra Javeline, Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
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Third,inaddition to their debts with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank, the Russian government began borrowing money from
international markets. The Eurobond was the instrument of choice. By the
summer of 1998, the Russian government had borrowed $4.3 billion through
such medium and long-term instruments.
50
As a fourth new method for raising revenue, the Russian Finance Ministry
introduced new debt instruments in 1995, the short-term bond or gosudarstven-
nye kratkosrochnye obligatsii or GKO and the medium-term bond known by its
acronym, OFZ. GKOs matured after three or six months, making them espe-
ciallyattractive to those investors looking forquick turnaround on their money.
Many celebrated the GKOs as a particularly useful innovation since it brought
money into the Russian state coffers in a non-inflationary way, while at the
same time gave investors an incentive for maintaining low inflation rates and
a stable currency.
As a package, however, these schemes for maintaining stabilisation were
not sustainable in the long run. The GKO market grew exponentially. In
1994, the short-term bond market amounted to only $3 billion. By 1997,GKO
debts outstanding totalled $64.7 billion, which ballooned to $70 billion in the
summer of 1998.
51
In this same summer, two related external shocks – the
Asian financial crisis and falling oil prices – began to reverberate in Russia.
The same people who were losing money in South Korea had money tied
up in Russia.
52
To provide incentives for these investors to keep their money
in Russia, the Finance Ministry responded by continually raising the return
rates on GKOs.
53
A month before the crash, yields on these treasury bills had
reached 113 per cent.
54
The fall in oil prices decreased Russian export revenues,
causing the Russian current account to go from a $3.9 billion surplus in 1997 to
an estimated $4.5 billion deficit in 1998.
55
Russian tax receipts fell dramatically,
as did Central Bank reserves. In effect, the Russian government was bankrupt.
50 Joseph Kahn and Timothy L. O’Brien, ‘Easy Money: A Special Report: For Russia and
its U.S. Bankers, Match Wasn’t Made in Heaven’, New York Times, 18 Oct. 1998,p.1.
51 Hoffman, The Oligarchs,p.469.
52 On the worldwide crisis, see Paul Blustein, The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked
the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).
53 At first, the Russian government resisted IMF advice of raising interest rates, preferring
instead tospend foreigncurrency reservesto defendthe rouble.Eventually, however, they
were compelled to raise interest rates. See US GAO Report to the House Committee on
Banking and Financial Services, ‘Foreign Assistance: International Efforts to Aid Russia’s
Transition Have Had Mixed Results’, Nov. 2000,GAO-01–8,p.46.
54 John Thornhill, ‘IMF and Russia in a New Loan Accord’, Financial Times, 8 July 1998,
p. 2.
55 William H. Cooper, ‘The Russian Financial Crisis: An Analysis of Trends, Causes,
and Implications’, Report for Congress, 18 Feb. 1999,pp.98–578. Available online at:
www.cnie.org/nle/inter-16.html
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In a drastic, desperate move, the Russian government announced on
17 August 1998 a compulsory conversion of short-term GKOs into longer-term
debt instruments. The Russian debt market immediately collapsed as investors
refused to believe that the Russian government would ever pay back this bor-
rowed money. On this same day, the Russian government also announced a
ninety-day moratorium on payment of all hard-currency loans owed to West-
ern commercial banks. Simultaneously, the government announced a new
trading price for the rouble at 30 per cent lower than the day before. In one
day, the two alleged economic achievements of the Yeltsin era – control of
inflation and a stable, transferable currency – were wiped away.
These emergency measures did little to halt the economic crisis. The stock
market all but disappeared, the rouble continued to fall and banks began to
close. Responding desperately to a desperate situation, Yeltsin fired Kirienko
and his government the next week and nominated Viktor Chernomyrdin as his
candidate for prime minister. As the confirmation process for Chernomyrdin
dragged on throughout September, the economy continued to collapse. The
rouble continued to plummet, banks refused to allow withdrawals, prices
soared and stores emptied as people started to stockpile durable goods such
as cigarettes, sugar and flour.
Renewed political polarisation
The August 1998 financial meltdown jolted the regime in Russia like no other
event since the October 1993 stand-off. In combination with a subsequent
banking scandal, the August 1998 crisis sparked a ‘who lost Russia’ debate in
the West.
56
At the time, Russia looked as if it had failed at making the transition
from a command economy to a market system.
Russia’s transition from authoritarian rule to democracy also looked less
certain. In the immediate aftermath, the financial crisis changed the de facto
distribution of power between political actors and institutions in the country
in favour of the parliament. This shift in the distribution of power, in turn,
threatened to undermine Russia’s constitutional stability. The Duma demon-
strated its new (if temporary) importance by dominating the selection process
of a new prime minister. Unlike previous votes for a new prime minister,
Duma deputies did not capitulate to Yeltsin’s demands, but made it clear that
they would vote down his candidate, Viktor Chernomyrdin, if the president
56 John Lloyd, ‘Who Lost Russia? The Devolution of Russia’, New York Times Magazine,
15 Aug. 1999.
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nominated him for a third time. Yeltsin relented and nominated the Duma’s
preferred candidate, Evgenii Primakov. Though not obligated constitutionally
to consult the Duma on ministerial appointments, Primakov (with Yeltsin’s
acquiescence) nonetheless co-operated with Duma leaders to form a coali-
tion government. Taking advantage of Yeltsin’s weakness, Primakov and his
Communist allies in the Duma floated the idea of limiting the powers of the
presidency through an extra-constitutional pact. Yeltsin worried about even
more radical challenges to his authority, warning potential conspirators, ‘we
have enough forces in order to stop any plans for taking power’.
57
That these
ideas were even circulating demonstrated that the political rules of the game
established in 1993 were still vulnerable in 1998.
From August 1998 until May 1999, Russia’s Communists had their best
opportunity to challenge the existing economic and political order after their
candidate, Primakov, became prime minister against Yeltsin’s wishes in the
wake of the August 1998 financial meltdown. Upon assuming office, Primakov
invited a Communist Party member, Iurii Masliukov, to serve as his economic
tsar. Rhetorically, Primakov and Masliukov promised to reverse radical eco-
nomic reforms, raise pensions and wages, curtail the activities of Western
agents of influence such as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, toss 1,000 bankers in jail and hinted at restoring state control over prices
and property.
58
In practice, Primakov and his Communist allies in the govern-
ment pursued none of these policies but instead proved to be as fiscally con-
servative and monetarily stringent as previous reform governments.
59
Instead
of chasing the IMF out of Russia, Primakov continued to negotiate with this
‘tool of imperialism’ and even agreed to introduce a package of legislation
recommended by the IMF. In its negotiations with the World Bank, the Pri-
makov government actually rejected the bank’s recommendation for pension
payments as too high. When offered the opportunity to roll back capitalism,
Russia’s Communists instead adhered to the general principles of the system
in place.
Another challenge to constitutional stability erupted in the spring of 1999
when the Duma opened impeachment proceedings against the president. In
the week leading up to the impeachment vote, held on 15 May 1999, Yeltsin
looked certain to be impeached by the Duma on at least one count – his
decision to invade Chechnya in 1994. In a bold counter-attack, just days before
57 Yeltsin, quoted in Bill Powell and Evgeniya Albats, ‘Summer of Discontent’, Newsweek
(International edition), 19 Jan 1999.
58 John Thornhill, ‘Primakov Defies IMF Advice’, Financial Times, 17 Sept. 1998,p.2.
59 As to why, see Evgenii Primakov, Vosem’ mesyatsev plyus . . .’ (Moscow: Mysl’, 2001).
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