Privatization in Russia

Privatization in Russia describes the series of post-Soviet reforms that resulted in large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Most privatization took place in the early and mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, who assumed the presidency following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production but human labor. Under the Soviet Union, the number of state enterprises was estimated at 45,000. In the later years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions on private property and introduced initial market reforms. Privatization enabled Russia to shift from the deteriorating Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, but also coincided with a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives. This economic transition has been described as katastroika and as "the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history". A few "strategic" assets, including much of the Russian defense industry, were not privatized during the 1990s. The mass privatization of this era remains a highly contentious issue in Russian society, with many Russians calling for revision or reversal of the reforms.

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