A MAN OF CHANGE: A STUDY OF THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BORIS YELTSIN by BORIS YELTSIN

Author:BORIS YELTSIN [YELTSIN, BORIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-909156-86-9
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications
Published: 2015-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

The legislature in the RSFSR adopted a policy which was, in its own peculiar way, ambiguous and contradictory: on the one hand, the conceptual ‘500 days’ program called for economic reforms to be brought in simultaneously in all the republics in the USSR; on the other hand, the objective logic by means of which the ‘Declaration on the state sovereignty of Russia’ came into being demanded a raising of the republic’s status within the USSR, and led to the economic interests of the RSFSR being put up in opposition to the interests of the government of the union. The Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet worked intensively in the summer and fall of 1990 to enhance Russia’s status as a state within the USSR, and on the creation of the legal basis for the transition toward market relations in Russia.

On 13th July 1990 the Supreme Soviet adopted the Directive ‘On the State Bank of the RSFSR and on the banks within the territory of the republic’, which laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Russian banking system.

On 14th July 1990 the Presidium’s Directive ‘On the core principles behind the conducting of external economic activity within the territory of the RSFSR’ was adopted. This directive established that “...all legal entities and individual citizens, regardless of the form of ownership, acting within the territory of the RSFSR, are entitled to undertake external economic activity and go directly onto the external market.” 600 This Directive brought an end to the state’s monopoly on external trade, which for many decades had been one of the distinctive features of the Soviet economic system.

A conflict began between the Russian legislation and the legislation of the union. In parallel to this genuine conflicts erupted in the field of the exercise of rights by Russia and the Union of SSRs in the management of the economy. The union bodies hurried to sign big contracts with overseas corporations, for which the party that would have to pay most, objectively speaking, would have to be Russia.

The process of corporatization and privatization of companies which were subordinate to the union and located on Russian territory began. All this caused direct harm to Russia’s economic interests and sovereignty. Disagreements between the leaders of Russia and the leaders of the Union grew.

On 31st August, at an assembly of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Yeltsin gave a speech in which he gave an update on the course of negotiations with the leaders of the union on the economic reform. “Comrade Gorbachev, M.S., proposed that the two programs be merged,” Yeltsin said. “That would be like combining amperes and kilometers. It’s not possible. The two programs contain completely different principles.” The conceptual difference that Yeltsin identified between the two programs was that the Shatalin-Yavlinsky group was proposing that economic policy be implemented via the sovereign republics in the USSR, “whereas the government program is once again a program enforced from above: we are dictating this to you, you are going to perform it, and that’s that.

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