Exactly 2,000 years ago in 9 A.D., harsh reformer Wang Mang seized the Chinese throne and proclaimed the start of the Xin Dynasty. Wang Mang had every chance to go down in Chinese history as the founder of a dynasty. But when the Yellow River flooded and tens of thousands of people died, most Chinese believed that the emperor was to blame. Despite widespread public opposition, Wang Mang tried to carry out new reforms anyway. But in 12 A.D. the river changed course once again, and this was the end of Wang Mang.
Yegor Gaidar would probably not have liked Wang Mang’s reforms, whose measures — like all Chinese reforms — were something of a mix between Lenin and Bismarck. But in the end, it wasn’t Wang Mang’s reforms that did him in. It was the rising Yellow River — which he had no control over, of course.
Gaidar’s political fate was not decided in the turbulent years of 1991 and 1992 but by 70 years of Soviet communism. In 1991, the Soviet Union was bankrupt, and the worst consequences of this bankruptcy hit the country at precisely the time when Gaidar was given the responsibilities of reforming Russia’s ruined economy and saving the country from famine and civil war. Gaidar had as much control over the hyperinflation that hit Russia once he liberalized prices in 1992 as Wang Mang had over the flooding of the Yellow River.
Gaidar was a brilliant economist, but he was a weak politician because he did not crave power. Politicians should not hide their love for power; they should love it with passion. This is one of the prerequisites for the job.
But because Gaidar wasn’t like that, he didn’t do certain simple things that any demagogue in his place would have done. Gaidar did not like to kick a person while he was down. After the Soviet Union collapsed, he didn’t try to whip up emotions and foment hatred among Russians against the Communist Party. As to the role that the Soviet Communist Party played in ruining both the Soviet and Russian economies, Gaidar thought that there was no need to spell out the obvious.
Because Gaidar didn’t like power, he considered economic reforms to be the most important task. In the end, the reformers and former President Boris Yeltsin fell hostage to the siloviki. They were hostages to corrupt and obstinate generals who started the war in Chechnya and to the Prosecutor General’s Office. That was why they needed to find a successor to Yeltsin who could rein in the Prosecutor General’s Office and the military. They found one from the ranks of the siloviki — Vladimir Putin.
Gaidar was also a very courageous man. Although he didn’t hold photo ops in the cockpits of fighter jets or pose shirtless while fishing (for which he did not have an ideal physique), it was Gaidar who called people to the streets to rally in support of Yeltsin in October 1993 when armed anti-Yeltsin forces stormed the Ostankino television center. Unlike Putin, Gaidar did not hide from the television cameras for three or four days after every terrorist act. And if Gaidar had been president in 2004, I can guarantee you that he never would have ordered his Nalchik-bound plane to return to Moscow upon learning that Beslan School No. 1 had been seized by terrorists.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.