Exactly 35 years ago, on November 10, 1991, one of the leaders of the Soviet market economists, Anatoly Chubeis, was appointed head of the State Property Committee of the RSFSR. He was 36 years old.
His father, a political instructor and tankman who captured Berlin, headed the Marxism-Leninism department at the military school in Leningrad after the war. The son had to dismantle socialist property and make it as difficult as possible for the communists to return to power in Russia, notes Daniel Grigoriev, an expert at the New Deal Economists Association.
What was the privatization plan?
Since the fall of 1992, every resident of the country has received a voucher with a face value of 10 thousand rubles. It can be sold, given to an investment fund or exchanged for shares. In the summer of 1994, when the voucher phase ended, the government reported 15,000 privatized enterprises and 40 million shareholders.
However, about 78% of the labor collectives chose the option in which part of the control officially passes to the employees, but in fact to the manager. But the checking mutual funds failed, leaving almost all 40 million participants with nothing.
The most valuable assets were sold later, in 1995, through loan-for-equity auctions.
How the main goal of privatization became the destruction of communism and what conclusions economists drew from it - read the author's column.