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Architect of Russia's shock therapy reform dead
AFP - Thursday, December 17
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Russian economist Yegor Gaidar, the architect of the "shock therapy" economic reform that aimed to swiftly transform Russia into a market economy, is seen here in 2003. Gaidar has died aged 53, his spokesman said.
MOSCOW (AFP) - – Russian economist Yegor Gaidar, the architect of the "shock therapy" economic reform that aimed to swiftly transform Russia into a market economy, died Wednesday aged 53, his spokesman said.
Gaidar, a leading liberal in the government of president Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, was hailed by reformers but largely reviled by the Russian public who blamed him for the economic hardship caused.
In a sign Gaidar remains a hugely divisive figure, tributes poured in from his former allies for the boldness of the reforms but critics did not shy away from castigating the haste of the changes and hardship they caused.
Gaidar died at around 3:00 am (midnight GMT) while at work on a book, spokesman Valery Natarov told AFP, giving the cause of death as complications arising from a blood clot.
President Dmitry Medvedev praised Gaidar "for taking responsibility for unpopular but necessary measures" during a period of great change."
"He always followed his convictions which earned him the respect of his allies and opponents," Medvedev said in a statement released by the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin as president, said Gaidar had "worthily fulfilled the task" of taking key decisions that determined the future of the country.
Gaidar's boldest move was the decision in 1992 to introduce free market prices for most goods in Russia's shops, meaning the government no longer had the right to fix prices.
Along with Anatoly Chubais, he oversaw the start of privatization of Russia's state-owned assets that would prove equally controversial when the biggest prizes were snapped up by a small elite.
The reforms were known as "shock therapy" after Gaidar decided to implement the massive changes within a very short period of time rather than progressively.
Conservatives bristled at the radical reforms and the youth of Gaidar and his team -- most of whom were in their 30s at the time -- famously dubbing them as the "young boys in pink shorts, red shirts, and yellow boots."
"An extraordinary person has passed away, who has of course played a decisive role of a liberal reformer in Russia's history," Ruslan Grinberg, head of the Institute of Economy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told AFP.
"But I am of a different opinion of him as a politician," he said, noting that the reforms took a heavy toll on the Russian society. "Of course he also bears responsibility for that."
The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, told the ITAR-TASS news agency that Gaidar was wrong to have embraced reform with such speed.
"As a person I related to him with great warmth .... Gaidar went into politics with great hopes but the idea was everything in one stroke," Gorbachev said.
But Chubais, now head of the Russian Nanotechnologies state corporation and still one of Gaidar's closest allies, described him as a "great scientist, a great statesman."
"In the early 90s he saved the country from hunger, civil war and collapse," Chubais wrote in his weblog. "I will feel this loss all my life."
Gaidar was born in Moscow to a well-known intelligentsia family, the grandson of the Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar and the son of the military journalist Timur Gaidar.
He started his career as an economic journalist, including for the Soviet daily Pravda, but was rapidly promoted into Yeltsin's economic team as Communism collapsed.
Gaidar served as deputy prime minister, finance minister and also briefly as prime minister under Yeltsin.
Never celebrated for charisma and mocked for his jargon-crammed and stodgy public speeches, he departed frontline politics when his liberal Russia Choice party failed to win seats in parliamentary polls.
He was director of a respected think tank, The Institute for the Economy in Transition and wrote a book, "Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia," that demonstrated how the Soviet economy was doomed to collapse.
Gaidar in November 2006 fell ill during a visit to Ireland and subsequently said he had been deliberately poisoned, likely by "obvious or hidden adversaries" of the Russian government.
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