Deteriorating international relations overlay internal turmoil. Economic paralysis has Russia flirting with third world status, insurgents challenge a debilitated military apparatus, and U.S. protege Boris Yeltsin suffers single-digit popularity as the country nervously awaits the presidential elections scheduled for next year. In 1992 Boris Yeltsin predicted that good times were just around the corner. Barter has reemerged as a dominant mode of economic transaction. Workers are paid in-kind when they are paid at all.
Poverty is rampant.
Life expectancy is dipping, the population is declining, and Russia is flirting with third world status. Economic reform in Russia has not only been unsuccessful, it has been profoundly undemocratic. The international community poured billions of dollars into Russia, money that didn't trickle down but was instead diverted into the pockets of a select few. The motives for the Washington's insistence on Russia's swift, monetarist transition to capitalism are complex. U.S. economists and politicians, in cooperation with the IMF, focused on a single method for untangling from communism, a model developed and applied in Poland with mixed success.