MOSCOW — When Russian President Boris Yeltsin liberalised prices at New Year, did he know that the result would be to consign large sections of the population not just to malnutrition, but to actual starvation? This is
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MOSCOW — Everybody knows January in Russia was a bad month. But just how bad? The figures are now coming in. According to the Russian State Committee on Statistics, retail trade turnover during January, measured in
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MOSCOW — If the buying power of wages in Australia had fallen by 80% in a year, how large would the demonstrations be in Bourke Street or the Sydney Domain? It would have to be more than the 15,000 or so people who marched
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MOSCOW — As Russians gasped for breath after their first weeks of price liberalisation, how did they rate their government and its policies? Opinion polls in Moscow and St Petersburg have now provided some of the answers.
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MOSCOW — With the massacre of real wages since the new year, labour unions in Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union are facing the toughest test in their recent history. The response by union officials
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MOSCOW — In the main street of Novosibirsk in western Siberia, the protest march was a kilometre in length. Thousands of members of the city's labour collectives were demanding the restoration of affordable prices for
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MOSCOW — In the huge food store at Taganskaya Square, the mood at the bread counter was growing surly. Some 50 people pushed and argued, while the white-coated sales staff gestured helplessly. As usual, there was plenty of
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MOSCOW — When Boris Yeltsin chose Air Force Colonel Alexander Rutskoi as his running mate in the June 1991 Russian presidential elections, the Afghanistan war hero and former leading figure in Russian
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MOSCOW — In the space of a few weeks from mid-December, the Russian Federation is to make a crash transition to an open, deregulated market economy. This shift will crown the Russian government's program of economic "reforms",
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A taste of hyperinflationMOSCOW — When the first details of Yeltsin's "profound economic reforms" hit the Russian press toward the end of October, the public reaction was quick and spectacular. Sales of the
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MOSCOW — As Russian President Boris Yeltsin prepares to implement his harsh free-market "reform" program, a major split in his support coalition has cast doubt on the readiness of other "democrats" to pay the political price of
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MOSCOW — The savage free-market "reforms" of Russian President Boris Yeltsin are certain to encounter large-scale, organised worker resistance. This was clear by the afternoon of November 7, following the largest and angriest