ABSTRACT

The Yeltsin era of post-Soviet Russian politics opened with the new government facing two major structural tasks: the construction of a new political system to replace the single-party system of the Soviet period and the building of a new economic system based on free-market economics to replace the command system of the earlier era. These two tasks had to be accomplished without any clear plan for their achievement and in circumstances which did not favour such large-scale political and economic engineering. Politically it soon became clear that there was no consensus among elites about either the shape of the new polity or how that polity was to be achieved. Central elites were divided over both policy and process, while many regional elites were intent on maximising their power at the expense of the centre. Economically the crisis that had beset the economy in the last years of the Soviet era was exacerbated by the initial reform measures of the new government, resulting in a depression deeper andmore sustained than had occurred in the West during the 1930s. It is the great achievement of Yeltsin that, by the end of his presidency, the basis had been laid for a stable political system and a market economy. However, the costs of both of these achievements were significant.