Transformational Diplomacy After the Cold War: Britain’s Know How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2003 by Keith Hamilton

Author:Keith Hamilton [Hamilton, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, Diplomacy, History, Europe, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9781134123063
Google: WRhe3aQh_KEC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-12T04:05:48+00:00

Changing circumstances

The increased annual resources available for KHF work in Russia also enabled it to become involved in larger and more complex projects, some of which were of an interdisciplinary nature. But the new Country Strategy Paper for Russia, which after months in preparation was finalised in the autumn of 1994, built on the Fund's existing approach. ‘It is’, Faint observed, ‘testimony to the inherent robustness of this approach that we have not seen the need to recommend any change, despite the changing circumstances since the inception of the Russia programme in 1991.’111 The ‘changing circumstances’ included the prolonged constitutional wrangle between the president and hard-line conservatives in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies which led, in early October 1993, to a violent confrontation between Yeltsin and parliamentarians, and culminated in the storming by the army of the Supreme Soviet's headquarters in Moscow's White House.112 Two months later, on 12 December 1993, a referendum endorsed Yeltsin's latest draft constitution, but elections held on the same day for a new Russian parliament, the Duma, were less encouraging for Western observers. Communists and nationalists were left controlling some 40% of the new assembly, revealing what the strategy paper termed ‘a worrying degree of support for opponents of reform’.113

The subsequent resignation from office of two prominent economic reformers, the economics minister, Yegor Gaidar, and the finance minister, Boris Fedorov, seemed likewise to indicate a dwindling commitment to radical change. Voucher privatisation had proved far from popular. Stock had been misappropriated; jobs had been lost; administrative compromises had left enterprises in the hands of less than enterprising managers, and the promised rewards of a free-market economy had failed to materialise. Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin's energetic privatisation chief, nonetheless, remained in office, and in July a presidential decree initiated the auction and direct sale of shares in those key industries still in the public sector.114 The prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, may have concluded that the age of ‘market romanticism’ was over, but his government's tight monetary policy helped bring inflation down to single monthly figures, and its macroeconomic strategies won IMF approval. As Brian Fall observed in a telegram of 15 April 1994, the reformers had succeeded in drawing a line under the Soviet political and economic order. Whilst more conservative economic policies were now in vogue, understanding of the basics of monetary economics and budgetary discipline was slowly gaining ground amongst the political class, and ‘the whole centre of gravity of the economic policy debate ha[d] shifted towards the market place’.115

All this had implications for the KHF. Russia's new constitution had been designed to strengthen the presidency, and this, according to the CSP, suggested an improved climate for ‘delivering carefully targeted policy advice to the central ministries’.116 The issue, McCulloch later pointed out, was whether there were opportunities for the Fund to pursue the kind of reforms that it existed to promote, and reformers with which it could work.117 Yet amongst the Russian public and within the Duma there was a growing tendency to regard

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.