Russian Politics in Transition by Nikolai Biryukov & Victor Sergeyev

Author:Nikolai Biryukov & Victor Sergeyev [Biryukov, Nikolai & Sergeyev, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429756603
Google: FHp_DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43329064
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

The Voucherisation

The damage to the parliament's prestige was great. The deputy corps demonstrated once again that it was capable of nothing but meaningless manoeuvres and unproductive compromises. It was not long before the parliament was publicly humiliated about one of the most painful questions of the government's economic policy, viz. privatisation.

The entire issue was a good example of the lack of coordination and confrontation between the executive and the legislative. The Supreme Soviet had passed a law in due course that provided for "personal privatisation accounts" to be opened for each Russian citizen in the stateowned Savings Bank. The account was to certify a citizen's right to a share in the state and municipal property that was to be distributed free according to a State Privatisation Programme. The amounts to be transferred by the state onto these accounts could not be withdrawn as cash, but could only be used to buy a portion of the state property.64

The government proposed a different approach. It suggested to issue impersonal "privatisation cheques" (vouchers) that could be sold on the market. Anatoli Chubais, Chair of the State Committee on Property (responsible for privatisation), advocated "impersonal" vouchers and argued that, although vouchers were to be issued at the nominal value of 10,000 roubles, their real price would be much higher and exceed, indeed, $ 10,000 because enterprises were to be privatised at their pre-reform book cost. In August 1992 President Yeltsin used his "additional" legislative powers to embark on voucher privatisation. According to his decree, starting from 1 October 1992 all Russian citizens were to receive privatisation cheques of equal nominal value. The cheques, intended solely for future auctions of state and municipal property, might not be used as an ordinary means of payment, although one might sell and buy them freely.65 The decree obviously contradicted the law passed by the Supreme Soviet, in fact annulled it. The Supreme Soviet, however, failed to rescind the decree in the stipulated seven days period, although the majority of the deputies resented it strongly. Some of them would later blame it on Khasbulatov who was said to have "pigeon-holed" the decree.

Whether the accusation was justified or not, the voucher privatisation was carried out according to the presidential decree, not the Supreme Soviet's iaw, and became in effect another stage in the grand-scale looting, following the inflation shock of 2 January 1992 that had invalidated the bank savings of the bulk of the populace. The market price of vouchers was initially about 7,000 roubles (about $ 35 at the exchange rate as it was at the time), although it soon dropped to about 4,000. Towards the end of the voucher privatisation campaign the price figures sounded more impressive, about 30,000 to 40,000 roubles, but that was the effect of inflation: the real price fell even lower than before, to about $ 20-25. So much for the Chubais' mythical 10,000 dollars. It would be ridiculous, not to say outrageous, to consider such a voucher a true equivalent of an individual citizen's share in the Russian state property.

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