Cumbersome, inefficient and corrupt, the Soviet economy functioned, such as it did, because it had its own internal logic. Moscow decreed the production of every tank, shoe and potato; every working-age person was supposed to have a job; and prices were stable. If the end result was not exactly according to plan -- a long-drawn-out failure, in fact -- at least the command system offered a coherent vision of what the plan was.
No such coherence or vision applies to the new Russian economy. Since Boris Yeltsin began shock treatment last January, the result has been a bundle of contradictions. In...
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