Now that enterprises must pay their own workers, they need cash, most of which comes from foreign trade. Russia's exports have grown continuously since 1991, but they are losing money. The goal of export is not profit, as it would be in a true market, but cash enough to keep running the otherwise cashless economy. Active efforts to avoid cash drive the barter system. If a business has cash, government will demand it rather than goods in payment for taxes.
Cash is also vulnerable to extortion by organized crime, Russia's most explosive growth industry.
The payment of taxes in trade deprives the government of the flexibility to meet its cash obligations, such as pension payments and support of public health services. One of the conditions of the IMF bailout is that Russia collect its taxes in cash, but this will force companies to divert their meager inflow away from wages, directly worsening payroll shortfalls. So the capitalist reforms Yeltsin enacted have forced Russia into emergency retreat from the market into a cashless economy. Barter now provides the safety net that puts food onto the dinner tables of the workers, and forestalling a class revolution. Russia has become a looking-glass world, where the laws of economics, whether market or socialist, seem suspended.