In the face of opposition from the military-industrial complex, the apparatchiks who continue to run the Russian government and their constituents, the Yeltsin government has compromised its original program in ways that have seriously aggravated Russia's problems, not alleviated them. Loose credit and attendant uncontrolled expansion of the money supply, for example, have kept comatose inefficient state-owned enterprises alive and reignited raging inflation. The Post Weighs in Against Talbottism Remarkably, even the Washington Post has appreciated the absurdity of Amb. The old Soviet economy is collapsing, irrevocably. What's called reform is the way out of the wreckage into something more hopeful.
Social conditions are much better in Russia than in, say, Ukraine.
The reason is that Russia has made a substantial beginning on the process of reform, while Ukraine has done little and is suffering for it. To the extent that foreign loans are conditioned on further reform, they become a visible incentive to keep going . The Bottom Line The Center for Security Policy strongly opposes Amb. In so doing, as even the Washington Post has finally figured out, the social hardship and dislocation for the society at large will be compounded. Talbott specifically declined to explain how this major new U.S. taxpayer obligation would be financed.