Andrey Kolesnikov: We don’t have any other liberals for you

On April 16, 2004 Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Izvestiya columnist Andrey Kolesnikov "From Correspondence with Friends" devoted to the controversy between M. Khodorkovsky and Y. Gaidar.

“I’ll say right away, ” the author declares, “ that Gaidar’s position seems to me many times more adequate than the doubts of the persecuted entrepreneur, who also did a lot (I say without irony) for real transformations in the country and building a market economy. Well, it doesn’t happen that you today - a 30% budget deficit, a default on external debts, already depreciated deposits in Sberbank, for which nothing can be bought, because the state has almost zero inventories, and even buyer cards and coupons can only please you with a kilogram of sugar and a weightless piece of meat with bones (more precisely, bones with meat), and tomorrow - the growth of the economy, increasingly focused on domestic demand, swollen by leaps and bounds, gold and foreign exchange reserves, a strengthening ruble, declining inflation " .

A. Kolesnikov believes that "For all the costs that Khodorkovsky spoke about, mistakes and compromises, a) there was no other way for the country anyway, and b) it was then that the foundations for growth, a balanced budget were laid, an environment was created that made it possible, after all for several years to create added value, jobs, pay salaries, attract investments" .

Meanwhile, the reforms that began in the 90s continue (cf. the article by V. Leibin , and it is rather not liberalism that is experiencing the crisis, * "which has become the ideology and practice of the power elite", but rather "those areas that are still have not yet been reformed on liberal principles.

"Liberal, albeit involuntarily - you have to manage the country somehow - not only the ruling elite, but also the population has become liberal. Ordinary citizens, like that Molière character who did not know that he was speaking in prose, profess spontaneous liberalism, because they it's profitable - it's profitable to have convertible currency, go on vacation to Turkey, watch movie premieres on the same day with the rest of the world" *.

True, it is difficult for us to share A. Kolesnikov's optimism. First, both ordinary citizens and their (i.e., our) bosses have by no means become spontaneous liberals in everything; it would be more accurate to say that they became such only in the very foundations of the economy. Secondly, the “non-reformed spheres” are still not being reformed (except perhaps somehow and to the extreme, like the pension system), and some areas, which include social institutions that ensure the implementation of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens, are rather counter -reformed.

Sources

• Kolesnikov Andrei. From correspondence with friends: Russia is experiencing the heyday of the liberal epistolary genre // Russian newspaper. 2004. 16 April.