Reform Team's Sad Reunion

Last week at the Center for Liberal-Conservative Politics on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa, in a cozy osobnyak, or private house, Yegor Gaidar held a sort of birthday party to celebrate the creation of his government of reform. Exactly four years ago, President Boris Yeltsin named Gaidar deputy prime minister.


I well remember the White House in early November 1991, the large office where Gaidar was already ensconced and surrounded by all sorts of young men no one had ever heard of -- future ministers and important government functionaries. They were all talking excitedly about what might happen after Jan. 1, 1992, when prices would be freed up.


In my personal archives I have a 1991 100-ruble bill bearing Lenin's stern profile. Today it is not every beggar who will take a 100-ruble note -- worth the equivalent of less than a kopek 14 years ago. Back then 100 rubles was a lot of money. But my bill has another value: A week before Yeltsin's decree appointing a new government, it was autographed by Yegor Gaidar, Yevgeny Yasin (now economics minister), Sergei Dubinin (former finance minister), and Mikhail Zadornov (now chairman of the State Duma's committee on the budget, taxes, banking and finance). They signed their names to commemorate the fact that 100 rubles was money. No one had any idea how much it would devalue.


Gaidar's reception was in two parts. Friends and former members of Gaidar's team, many of whom have now gone on to the business world or to other parties, were invited to come at 5 p.m. The idea was that they could talk about the past and future of reforms without their wives and other guests, who were invited to come at 7 p.m.


The question was how many of Gaidar's former associates, who made names and careers for themselves while on his team, would turn out to talk with the former prime minister?


Not many, as it turned out. This first part of the evening was a real failure. Most of the people who it was hoped would come didn't, and the few who did spent no time talking about reforms. The talk was standard cocktail-party chitchat. The most important thing that was said, perhaps, was Gaidar's remark that the popular notion about the impossibility of a return to the past could turn out to be a bitter illusion.


Clearly, liberal reformers who began with Gaidar are not sentimental and are disinclined to discuss the past. So what was there to discuss? Nothing, they evidently decided.


The purely festive part of the evening, with a banquet and all the wives, did much to smooth over the distressing impression left by the "meeting of comrades." Many of those expected at 5 p.m. appeared two hours later, including current members of the government and presidential administration. The conversations were pleasant and as substantive as conversations can be when people are balancing dinner plates on their laps. The sense of group betrayal that emerged during the earlier part of the evening all but evaporated.


I don't know in what mood Gaidar left his party, but it seems that the highest price for reforms was paid by the person who started them. He has provoked the animosity of many of his compatriots, including those whose lives have obviously changed for the better. Gaidar was also forced to realize that losing votes leads to the loss of colleagues and comrades.