o criminals. Official corruption and the lack of enforced laws and clearly defined property laws has lead to public dissension. One of Yeltsin's greatest mistakes was moving economic reform ahead so quickly while not addressing the need for immense political reform at the same time. The Russian economy is in disarray, and the standard of living for the average citizen is as low if not lower than during theCommunist rule. This had bred many social problems which, in effect, mirror those of the Communist administration. Religious and ethnic animosity and the lack of proper education in this new political and economic system has lead to public discontent and a rise in the alcoholism problem. There has been recent improvements in the distribution of wealth. There have been improvements in the privatization process, especially in the building sector, this could bring the expansion of small-scale property ownership, which is also an important step towards private ownership. There is also a stronger entrepreneurial spirit among lower class society. Yet with the lack of any experience in private proprietorship and private business practices the population of the Russian Federation is still not taking to the new system. For too many years it was imprinted on them thateverything must be publicly owned. Much of this can to attributed to the Communist tradition of not communicating with the public, which is a core part of any democratic system, the public participation and communication in and with government. With the apparent lack of public participation in government, and in turn the lack of communication by the government with the people we can see that the Russian Federation is far from being democratic. The government acted too quickly in it's economic reforms with not enough practical experience in Democratic/Capitalistic to pull it off. We saw that some of the majorcontributing factors in the fall of communism was the dissension of th...
