Yegor Gaidar

Yegor Gaidar was a Russian economist and politician who served as acting prime minister in 1992 and led Russia’s rapid transition toward a market economy after the Soviet Union dissolved.

Shock therapy (economics): A rapid transition from state control to a market economy through liberalization, stabilization, and privatization. Gaidar’s government used rapid liberalization as the central method of economic transition.
Hyperinflation: Extremely rapid and sustained increases in the general price level that sharply reduce money’s purchasing power. Price liberalization coincided with a severe inflation surge that became a defining cost of the transition.
Boris Yeltsin: The first president of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Yeltsin appointed Gaidar to lead the government and backed his early market reforms.
Soviet Union: A socialist federation that existed from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. Gaidar’s reform agenda addressed the economic system inherited from this state.
Gradualism (economics): An approach to economic transition that introduces market reforms incrementally rather than all at once. Gradualism was the principal alternative to the rapid sequencing Gaidar favored.
Price liberalization in Russia: The January 1992 removal of most state controls on prices in Russia. This first major reform under Gaidar’s government aimed to end shortages and establish market pricing.
Russian oligarchs: A small group of wealthy Russian business figures who gained major economic and political influence in the 1990s. The uneven distribution of privatized assets shaped criticism of the market transition Gaidar advocated.
Anatoly Chubais: A Russian politician and economist who led the country’s privatization program in the 1990s. Chubais worked within the reform team associated with Gaidar and later directed privatization.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union into independent states. The breakup created the new Russian government in which Gaidar led economic policy.
500 Days Program: A 1990 Soviet reform proposal for transforming the planned economy into a market system within 500 days. Its negotiated, staged design differed from the emergency reforms implemented under Gaidar.

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Viktor ChernomyrdinCompared with: Gaidar’s rapid-market-reform program contrasted with Chernomyrdin’s more gradual, state-connected approach.