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Witness History: Economic 'shock therapy' in Russia

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28/02/2022 GMT

Economic 'shock therapy' in Russia

BBC World Service - Witness History, Economic 'shock therapy' in Russia

Chaos and hardship hit Russia when free-market reforms were introduced overnight in 1992

Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the shock free-market reforms of early 1992, just weeks after the collapse of the USSR.

President Vladimir Putin came onto the Russian political scene in 1999 after a decade of chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This included a disastrous experiment with free market reforms in 1992, which led to an increase in poverty for ordinary Russians and the emergence of an elite of super-wealthy Oligarchs. In 2018, Dina Newman spoke to one of the architects of this “shock therapy” - Andrei Nechaev, who was then the Minister for Economic Development.

(Photo: Old women selling cigarettes on the streets of Moscow in 1992. Credit: BBC)

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