The usual theories were launched by the usual people. The pro-government people said the ruble's 900-point plunge was a chyotko splanirovannaya sotsial'no-politicheskaya aktsiya ("a well-planned socio-political action"), and a popytka finansovogo putcha ("an attempt at a financial putsch") by the opposition. The opposition called it an ocherednoi obman naroda, the latest in a long series of hoaxes against the people. They saw the hand of zapadny kapital, Western capital, in the drama. The spies called the ruble's dive a provokatsiya so storony izvestnykh kommercheskikh sil, "a provocation by well-known commercial structures."
Everyone and his driver began to indulge in that quintessential Russian pastime, iskat' vinnovnogo -- looking for the guilty party. Ministers cut short their vacations in Sochi. Duma members flew home from London. The government had an ekstrennoye soveshchaniye, an emergency meeting. Scapegoats, kozly otpushcheniya, were needed, and President Boris Yeltsin found two: Viktor Gerashchenko, the Central Bank chairman, and Sergei Dubinin, the acting finance minister. Yeltsin couldn't fire Gerashchenko when he confiscated people's money in 1991 and 1993 and he can't fire him today. But he could fire Dubinin, who had nothing to do with the ruble's collapse. It sure must have felt good to fire somebody. The all-important gosudarstvennaya kommissiya, the state commission, was formed. In a Russian crisis, you cannot do anything without a state commission.
The commission went to work, and so did the press. The Russian press is always at its best during a crisis. The headlines alone were a cause for joy: Rublepad ("Rublefall"); Rublyovaya Pravda ("Rublic truth."); 900 Punktov Kotoriye Potryasli Mir ("900 Points That Shook the World").
Then it was all resolved Thursday by the traditional Russian compliance-achieving method of knut i pryannik, the carrot and the stick. The carrot was a three-month treasury bill with a fat 315-percent yearly return being offered on the currency exchange floor. The stick was the presence of agents of the former KGB, who were taking names and numbers of anyone who foolishly chose to put their money into dollars that day.
We love Russia. We love Russian crises. Now, could someone please tell us where we could get some of those treasury bills?
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