Lines, the everyday nightmare for Soviet-era consumers, now form only when crowds try to get into the Reebok store and other specialty shops. The enormous military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union is slowly turning to civilian production. Hundreds still have not made the switch. The essential ingredient is capital, and much of it will have to come from abroad. Such a move would endanger Russia's relations with the International Monetary Fund and the new World Trade Organization, both of which insist on reducing barriers to international commerce.
Farms are the strongest bastion of the collective mentality in Russia.
Only a few hundred thousand private farmers have gone out on their own, and they lack storage facilities, a reliable distribution system for their products and a source for the loans they need to buy seed and equipment. This may be about to change. Yeltsin has signed a decree to repeal laws forbidding private ownership of land. In 1995 the reform process accelerated. First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoli Chubais and his government colleagues pushed through legislation that reined in deficits by making it illegal for the state to spend money it does not have.