Boris Yeltsin and Russia’s rocky road to capitalism: the early years Available to Purchase

This paper examines the origins and the institutions, strategies, and policies of the shift to transition toward capitalism and democracy as the aspired system of political economy of Boris Yeltsin and his supporters in Russia in the early 1990s. The paper argues that this process of radical change is very “rocky”, and that its outcome is not yet clear. The shift from socialist democratization under Gorbachev to capitalist transformation under Yeltsin had multiple origins; but a core element in the process was the very likely abandonment of the ancien régime by party, state, and industrial élites themselves. Key factors in the transition in the early 1990s were: continuity amid change in political leadership and governance institutions; the absence of a developed political party system that could have united Yeltsin and the new Russian parliament; and the underlying socioeconomic conditions and attitudes of the Russian population.