ack administrative recognition for seemingly arbitrary reasons. It would appear that the best antidote for ethnic and national ills is a healthy economy that would bind the periphery to the center, therefore making secession an unattractive option. Along with sensible economic reforms, political restructuring is essential for stable democracy to take hold. The Road to a Market Economy At the heart of the difficulties plaguing the Russian Federation are the economic reforms that the Yeltsin regime has imposed upon the Russian people. Capitalism is viewed as a necessary ingredient (though not sufficient) contingency of a stable democracy. All established democracies are located in countries that place economic manufacture and aggregation in the hands of privately owned firms, with distribution of scarce resource achieved through market forces (Smitter 66). The movement away from the penetrative, all-encompassing Soviet economic octopus has caused enormous hardships for the Russian people. It has placed economic uncertainties in the path of political realities, resulting in policies that attempt to address the often contradictory objectives of economic liberalization in the wake of political democratization. Sweeping in after the failed coup of August 1991, economic reformers, led by Prime Minister Egor Gaidar, placed the Russian economy on a steady diet of economic shock therapy. The government’s misguided attempt to rest its reform program on fulfillment of a limited number of macroeconomic variables left the Russian economy in disarray. Despite a precipitous decline in economic productivity, radical reformers defended their macroeconomic policy, arguing that the supply side of the Russian economy would receive proper attention after stabilization. But what were the Russians to do in the meantime? The revolutionary fervor that characterized the early economic reforms did not take into account the punitive realities of their policie...
