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- <text id=92TT2930>
- <title>
- Dec. 28, 1992: A Bone for the Dogs
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Dec. 28, 1992 What Does Science Tell Us About God?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 14
- WORLD
- A Bone for the Dogs
- </hdr><body>
- <p>With Gaidar gone, Russian capitalists grow wary of the future
- </p>
- <p> Yegor Gaidar never expected to last long in power. Appointed
- to Boris Yeltsin's government a year ago, the 36-year-old
- architect of Russia's economic reforms foresaw a "kamikaze"
- mission: launch Russia's transition to a market economy and then
- withdraw, battered and no doubt vilified for making his nation
- suffer. His prediction proved accurate last week, when he was
- ousted as acting Prime Minister. In his place rose fears that
- Russia had begun a slow retreat from democratic reform.
- </p>
- <p> Gaidar's demise came after two weeks of turmoil at the
- Congress of People's Deputies. After compromises had collapsed
- and a constitutional crisis had been averted, Gaidar fared
- poorly in a vote, and a weary Yeltsin caved in to the
- conservatives. To succeed Gaidar, Yeltsin sullenly chose Victor
- Chernomyrdin, 54, a former Communist Party apparatchik from the
- powerful energy industry.
- </p>
- <p> Yeltsin promised "no backtracking" and named Gaidar as his
- economic adviser. On Saturday he cut short a visit to China,
- claiming he had to "restore order" in Moscow and ensure that the
- "inner core" of Gaidar's team was not excluded from the new
- government. But the show of authority could not obscure
- Yeltsin's political weakness. And his nation remains
- impoverished. Although officials from the G-7 industrialized
- nations agreed to permit Russia to defer payments on $15 billion
- of the $16 billion it owes in foreign debts for this year and
- next, the country is still $86 billion in arrears.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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