CATASTROIKA

CATASTROIKA - Multilingual από infowar
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Russian privatization was the reform consisting in privatization of state-owned industrial assets that took place in Russia in the 1990s, during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, where private ownership of enterprises had been illegal for a long time. The privatization enabled Russia to shift from the deteriorating Soviet planned economy towards market economy, but as a result a good deal of the national wealth fell into the hands of a relatively small group of so-called business oligarchs (tycoons), and the wealth gap increased dramatically. It was described as "Catastroika" and it was the "most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history". Many non-industrial assets, most notably, most of the social welfare and telecommunications, as well as strategic industrial assets, including much of the Russian military industry, were not privatized during the 1990s. The privatization of the 1990s is still a highly contentious and polarizing issue in the Russian society, stirring up strong sentiments among the population, including the widespread negative attitude towards Anatoly Chubais, one of the most instrumental figures of the reform, and even calls for its revision.